Posted by
DavidNYC
Well, here's something else I was wrong about: The electoral college did wind up mattering. Even if Bush takes Iowa and New Mexico (as it seems he will), his final total will be just 286 electoral votes - 16 over the 270 he needed.
Bush won three states by a margin of 18* or more EVs: Texas, Florida and, of course, Ohio. Had any single one of these states gone to Kerry, we would have won. Obviously, the margin in Texas was enormous - we lost by 23 points. In Florida, though, we lost by just a little over 5 points, and in Ohio, by just 2.5 percent.
In 2000, as we well know, had any single Bush state of any size flipped, Gore would have won. However, the last time there was a single state a) whose outcome directly affected the final results and b) was as close as Ohio was this year, was California all the way back in 1916. So of the three narrowest victories in the past 100 years, we have:
1) Bush in 2000
2) Wilson in 1916
3) Bush in 2004
Bush takes the gold and the bronze. Mandate, my ass.
* Kerry would have needed 18 extra EVs to win. Had Bush's total been reduced by 16, he still would have won with 270. Had it been reduced by 17, he would have had 269 and then won in the House. So Kerry needed to take Bush down to 268 in order to win.
Posted at 07:59 pm by blog swarm
