The Electoral College Math

Richard Baehr over at the American Thinker has this interesting discussion:

Obama's Electoral College problem is that his strongest states, where he runs better than Clinton, are states where the Democrats are still likely to lose, though maybe a bit less decisively with Obama at the top of the ticket. These states include deep South states with high African American percentages of the population: Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and North Carolina, and some central and western states with very few black voters: Nebraska, Kansas, Montana, Alaska, and the Dakotas. Losing a state by 10% rather than 20% still collects zero Electoral College votes. On the other hand, Obama is running ahead of Clinton in some states the Democrats have been winning regularly of late: Oregon, Washington, Vermont, Maine, Hawaii, and Maryland, which adds no Electoral College votes to the Party's count. In general, Obama is running better among white voters in states with few black voters, and worse than Clinton among white voters in states with higher percentages of blacks.

The sociologists can opine on what that means, but the Electoral College math shows this: the most competitive of the large swing states -- Ohio (4% margin for Bush in 2000, 2% for Bush in 2004), Michigan (5% Gore win in 2000, 3% Kerry win in 2004), Pennsylvania (5% Gore win in 2000, 2% Kerry win in 2004), and Florida (tie in 2000, 5% Bush win in 2004) -- are all states where Clinton is more competitive with McCain than Obama is with McCain at the moment (though Rasmussen has Obama a bit closer in Florida, differing from all other surveys of that state). . . .