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Jens 'n' Frens
Idle thoughts of a relatively libertarian Republican in Cambridge, MA, and whomever he invites. Mostly political.
"A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures."
-- Daniel Webster
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Wednesday, December 29, 2010 :::
Going into presidential contests, I like to break the states into the 269 electoral votes that are most likely to go each way, sometimes switching around the real swing states so as to get to even numbers. Since Nebraska's 2nd district went to Obama, even though it gave him less support than the median electoral vote did, and even though the districts will be redrawn, I'm going to leave that on the Democratic side for the time being, mostly because it makes the numbers work out pretty well with little other reordering. So:
In 2012, those states and districts that McCain won in 2008, plus North Carolina, Indiana, Florida, Ohio, Virginia, and New Hampshire, will constitute 269 electoral votes.
| State | electoral votes | 2008 vote | | Georgia | 16 | 47.4 | | Montana | 3 | 48.8 | | Missouri | 10 | 49.9 | | North Carolina | 15 | 50.2 | | Indiana | 11 | 50.5 | | NE 2nd Dist. | 1 | 50.6 | | Florida | 29 | 51.4 | | Ohio | 18 | 52.3 | | Virginia | 13 | 53.2 | | Colorado | 9 | 54.6 | | Iowa | 6 | 54.8 | | New Hampshire | 4 | 54.9 | | Minnesota | 10 | 55.2 | | Pennsylvania | 20 | 55.3 | | ME 2nd Dist. | 1 | 55.7 | | Nevada | 6 | 56.4 | | Wisconsin | 10 | 57.1 | | New Mexico | 5 | 57.7 | | New Jersey | 14 | 57.9 | | Michigan | 16 | 58.4 | | Oregon | 7 | 58.4 | | Washington | 12 | 58.8 | | Maine | 2 | 58.8 |
This table shows the violations of the order of the 2008 vote that are entailed in this partition of the electoral college. The last column is the portion of the two-party vote that went to Obama in the 2008 election.
An alternative approach is to find a three-way partition of states and districts including some "swing states", again making sure that the number of electoral votes allocated to each side is the same. In this case 150 electoral votes went more heavily to McCain than Georgia did, and 150 went to Obama more heavily than the (at-large) state of Maine did. That leaves the 238 electoral votes in the table. In the table there are 56 electoral votes that went at least as McCain as Nebraska's second district did; similarly, there are 56 electoral votes that went at least as Obama as New Mexico did. The narrower conception of "swing" districts leaves 126 electoral votes in the middle.Labels: apportionment
::: posted by dWj at 3:08 PM
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