Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Are the Dems about to make a big mistake?

At this point Barack Obama has been all but anointed as the next President and it is an almost sure thing (99.9999%) that he will be the Democratic Parties candidate, but should he be?

Hillary has been basing some of the reasoning for her continued campaign on the fact that she has been carrying the big battleground states that the Dems have to carry to win in November ans so far she is right. Of the 19 battleground states that are identified in Wikipedia Hillary has carried 14. And of those states when compared to the 2004 elections Barack only carries 3 that went red.

More importantly if Hillary were to carry just the states that she has won so far (including TX because she won the primary and caucuses are easy to pack.) She would have 303 electoral college votes. Barack's current wins would give him 218. Even if we give him TX he still loses in the general election. You need 268 votes in the electoral college. Now granted there are still 4 states left to vote but they only carry 21 electoral college votes of those Hillary will probably get 14.

Now I am not a political scientist or a statistician but to me this seems to indicate that the candidate has the possibility of winning is Clinton.

Edited slight to correct the number of states left to vote and electoral college votes in play.

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