ELECTIONATE NOVEMBER 2, 2012
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It’s 2:17 AM on Wednesday, November 7th and President Obama has won reelection with 294 electoral votes. Colorado is still too close to call. But the network anchors aren’t mulling the course of Obama’s second term because they can’t help but notice the national popular vote. Romney's ahead…by a lot.
It was easy to dismiss Romney’s lead in the popular vote when the West Coast states were still outstanding, even if his four-point lead seemed formidable. But most precincts in California are now reporting and the president is still underwater by more than one million votes. Analysts extrapolating the final results based on initial returns and the percentage of outstanding precincts calculate that Obama is unlikely to take the lead, igniting a firestorm undermining the legitimacy of an embattled president. And yet weeks later, President Obama takes the popular vote lead, and never relinquishes it.
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This isn’t just a far-fetched scenario. If Obama ultimately wins the popular vote by a narrow margin, as suggested by the current average of national polls, Obama won’t lead the popular vote on Election Night and might not for weeks.
With the West Coast providing the margin of victory for any Democratic candidate in a close election, Republican presidential candidates outperform their eventual share of the popular vote until the West Coast reports its results. In 2008, California, Washington, and Oregon voted for Obama by a 4 million-vote margin, representing nearly half of his national popular vote victory.
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But the time zones are not alone in delaying results from Washington, Oregon, and California. In most eastern states, the overwhelming majority of votes are counted by the end of Election Night, since only a small share of absentee or overseas ballots arrive after the election. But elections in Washington and Oregon are now conducted entirely by mail and 41 percent of California voters voted by mail in 2008. In some states, ballots only need to be postmarked by Election Day and it can take days before all of the votes arrive and weeks before they get counted, usually in modest batches once or twice a day.
Just for good measure, several big, blue cities in the East and Midwest don't always count 100 percent of their ballots on Election Night. Democrats also appear to gain from the provisional ballots counted across the rest of the country in the days following the election. Although the amount that Democrats gain from these ballots compared to the West Coast is unclear, the 2008 returns suggest that millions of votes were counted after Election Night throughout the eastern half of the country.
As a result, initial returns and derived estimates can significantly underestimate the final Democratic share of the popular vote. Even though Obama ultimately won 53.6 percent of the two party vote in 2008, Obama and McCain were still deadlocked at 50 percent when the networks projected Ohio for Obama. When the 11PM poll closings gave Obama his 270thelectoral vote, the new president-elect only held 51.5 percent of the two party vote, even though California had already tabulated and reported many of its early votes. By the time Katie Couric signed off from CBS News sometime after Indiana was called at 2:10 AM, Obama held 52.5 percent of the two party vote—a margin two points short of his eventual victory.
Even by 5PM the next day, Obama only reached 53 percent of the two-party vote, one full point short of his final margin. How was that possible? Even though 22 hours elapsed since the polls closed in Indiana, approximately 10 million votes or 8 percent of total ballots hadn't been counted and Obama won them by a 61-38 margin. This isn't a new phenomenon. In 2004, Bush led by 2.95 points as late as one week after the election, but the final results showed Bush ahead by 2.4 points, as the results of 5 million uncounted ballots shrunk Bush's lead in the national popular vote by 463,000 votes.
Even worse, it won’t be easy to calculate how many votes remain: the percentage of precincts reporting only roughly correlates with the unknown number of outstanding ballots. This is especially true in the states with extensive mail balloting. In California, for instance, the Associated Press correctly reported that 100 percent of precincts were reporting (not sure about the date), even though only 89 percent of the eventual number ballots were tabulated. Obama would win 65 percent of those ballots, expanding his margin of victory by an additional 420,000 votes.
If Obama performs as strongly in California, Washington, and Oregon as he did in 2008, he could trail by several percentage points in the national popular vote while giving his victory or concession speech and ultimately seize the lead in the popular vote in the following days and weeks. Even a more middling performance out West, closer to Kerry's, would still allow him to make considerable gains. Unless Election Night ends with Obama holding a lead in the popular vote or Romney holding a large enough advantage to withstand the possibility of a predictably strong showing in late ballots, we may not know the winner of the popular vote for weeks.
23 comments
Well, Sandy could throw an enormous wrench into the popular vote count. How are people in New Jersey going to vote period? So much of the state has been badly damaged. Manhattan, Staten Island, Long Island, parts of Connecticut, ditto, even W. Va. ?
- Sophia
November 2, 2012 at 11:51am
If Obama gets elected "On Day One" he will have saved us $8 trillion of stupid investing class benefitting top rate tax cuts (including tax free interest, dividends, and capital gains) that would do little for the economy and increased defense spending we don't need. That's what I call a mandate.
- Nusholtz
November 2, 2012 at 12:43pm
...igniting a firestorm undermining the legitimacy of an embattled president. How can the legitimacy of the election be called into question when we consider these results from 2000: Total: Bush: 50,456,002 47.87% Gore: 50,999,897 48.38% Nader: 2,882,955 2.74% Electoral vote: Bush: 271 Gore: 266 Nowhere in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution does it mention anything about popular vote. I see the term Electors mentioned many times, however... I think if the President wins the electoral college, and it takes some indeterminate time to finish counting the popular vote, the republic will survive even if he does not come out on top in the popular vote. In any case, the right will have a hard time acknowledging his legitimacy even if the President wins both the popular vote and the electoral college by narrow margins. It's a lose/lose proposition from the standpoint of the margin of victory. The only monkey wrench is that what happened in Florida happens in Ohio, not in the sense of chads (we don't use punch cards in Ohio, we use the OCR system), but in the sense that the popular vote is so close that a potentially different result is generated upon a recount (which I am assuming there would be if the vote count were that close). Then the country would be in a bad spot.
- sbmacdon@cox.net-old
November 2, 2012 at 12:54pm
Typical moonbat liberal "best defence" pre-offence. Well, the One is toast - Romney has pulled ahead in Ohio already and is now aggressively aiming for 300+ EVs in PA, Minnesota and Michigan (take that, socialist parasite unions), so with Romney already at 55% popular vote and 320 EVs, no need to belly-ache over a nightmare that will not exist. Boo Hoo for Barry. But if Hussein Jr is "elected" it will be a nightmare. Why is your Messiah "embattled"? Because he never HAD any legitimacy to begin with. First, as Sherriff Arpaio CONCLUSIVELY DEMONSTRATED, Hussein Jr was born in Kenya: his grandmother confessed on camera; and raised in a terrorist Madrassa in Indo-indo-indo-Nietszche. Second, there is the fact that his father, or should I say "father" - READ THE BOOK, PEOPLE -, is a criminal anti-colonialist Islamist Kenyan, so Hussein Jr never was a "natural born citizen". Third, he would not have "won" without Chinese-Islamist-Russian money - it's been PROVEN you losers, just check Glenn Beck's site - and without VOTER FRAUD by ACORN. Fourth, Solyndra was an impeachable crime and he should have been removed from office anyway. Fifth, ACA was unconstitutional and he disqualified himself COMPLETELY by lying about it - tax, no tax, tax, no tax? LIES. Sixth, he bowed to his Caliph, the Islamist Abdullah of Saud, which is a disqualifying "high crime". Seventh, BENGHAZI. WORSE THAN WATERGATE. You need more? Come on. He's a goner; gone, done with, history. Embattled? You betcha. And the only way he can win is by lying, with the aid of MSM and Ayers, who is really running his campaign, and with voter fraud perpetrated by AFL-CIO.
- icarus-r
November 2, 2012 at 1:14pm
Any "mandate" Obama ever had has been completely ignored by the Tea-Party Republicans who came into office in 2010. All of his best efforts -- Obamacare, the Stimulus, repeal of dont-ask-dont-tell, the Dream act -- have been either ignored or actively attacked by Repbulicans. Any "popular majority" that would vote for Romney is exactly the reason we have the Electoral College -- so that large states can't run rough-shod over smaller states. All Obama has to do is win. Then we get to keep Obamacare, additional Stimulus, avoid a deficit exploding 20% tax-cut, maybe revoke the Bush tax-cuts, and possibly most important -- prevent conservative stacking of the Supreme Court. But only if Obama wins.
- AllanL5
November 2, 2012 at 1:15pm
Allan, a state is a legal fiction. I have trouble caring if a legal fiction gets run roughshod over. I do feel bad for that poorly shoed horse, though.
- Fishpeddler
November 2, 2012 at 1:27pm
please, Democrats will simply laugh at Republicans and rightly so. And really, after calling Obama a Muslim, Marxist, Commie, Nazi where can they go in their rhetoric? If Obama wins there will be no nightmare for me.
- blackton
November 2, 2012 at 1:38pm
icarus-r I hope you go visit some of the wingnut blogs and see if they can unmask you:)
- Sophia
November 2, 2012 at 2:27pm
Who effing cares? As long as it's Obama getting inaugurated on Jan. 20 the whole business is so much noise.
- cspencef
November 2, 2012 at 2:45pm
The real silence is the Obama buttlickers on the obstruction of justice/lying about the events in Benghazi, Libya (yeah, I know I wrote Syria a week ago). Even Watergate, bad as it was, did not include the murder of Americans in its coverup. TNR writers seem to have cast-iron stomachs. No interest in Fast & Furious, no interest in Obama's drones, which he claims can kill Americans w/o due process; and no interest in BO's lies about follow-up & aftermath of this fiasco. All that matters is re-electing his pliable self, to advance TNR's socialist vision.
- raygun
November 2, 2012 at 3:13pm
I agree with cspencef completely. Who cares? The antiquated notions of mandate and legitimacy have been rendered completely obsolete by the Supreme Court in Bush v Gore and the Republicans since Obama was elected with what was unquestionably an enormous popular AND Electoral College victory. What matters in our time is who has the power, and that is all. It is going to be political trench warfare with or without the popular vote. Winning the constitutionally established Electoral College is plenty good enough. Bush didn't even win the Electoral College and it didn't slow him down a bit. _________________ Gee whiz, raygun. Were there Americans murdered that we don't know about? "Covered up," as you say. Or was this supposed cover up conducted in plain view on the front pages of all the major newspapers? What is it in your wildest imagination that you think that you don't know about the events in Benghazi? God save us from paranoid wingnuts and their fantasy conspiracies.
- roidubouloi
November 2, 2012 at 3:23pm
roidubouloi: silence=coverup. TNR & apparently you have no interest in the Obama Admin coverup. How many TNR stories have there been about the murders in Benghazi? Compare it w/the number ofitems about Obamacare.The deaths of those Americans & the Susan Rice lies covering them up are not fantasies. The American ambassador & others really died. Really. Be smug about something else. TNR wingnuts, like Stalin, know you have to break a few eggs (dead US personnel in Benghazi, dead Border Patrol agents in Fast & Furious, dead Americans & collateral damage in drone attacks) to make an omelet: the nirvana of Obamacare. Better get your kneepads ready so you you will be in proper submissive position for ObamaII.
- raygun
November 2, 2012 at 3:55pm
My detached Canadian bones tell me Sandy killed any chance Romney ever had of winning and Obama's got a lock on it.
- basman
November 2, 2012 at 4:52pm
President Obama has already accepted publicly that he's the final link in the chain -- the "responsible officer of government" as he said -- when it comes to the deaths of Ambassador Stevens and the other American officials. That's rather more than George W. Bush ever did in respect of thousands of fatalities on 9/11/2001 two months after a presidential briefing memo entitled "Bin Laden to Attack Targets in U.S." However, a mixture of bureaucratic prioritizing and also GOP-directed funding for diplomatic security measures lie behind the actual events in Benghazi, as well as some delicate maneuvering regarding the U.S. presence in countries with a volatile political set-up such as Libya. There has been no shortage of media focus on Benghazi, but I think Obama's up-front dealing on this is the main reason why the Republican conspiracy machine has gained little traction so far.
- ironyroad
November 2, 2012 at 4:54pm
I love it when raygun shoots his mouth off... and hits his foot. What do you think are the odds we will never hear from him again after Nov 6th?
- zardoz67
November 2, 2012 at 5:06pm
Does someone know--I haven't seen it reported--what Obama did and didn't do over tthe 7-9 hours of the firefight, what military assets were available and why, if certain ones were available, they weren't deployed? I take no position on any dereliction of duty by him or his administration but I'd like to see these possibly blank spaces filled in.
- basman
November 2, 2012 at 5:07pm
I can understand raygun's feelings. We went into Iraq by mistake and Fox news never came out and said how terrible Bush was for being so foolish. And also, I've never been able to figure out why we invaded, even after Bush offered several alternative theories. And even if everyone knows that the reason we went in was trumped up, nobody was punished. And after President Bush misled us into war with what the British learned recently (it wasn't recent at all and had been contradicted by our own intelligence) he stood under a sign that said, "Mission Accomplished!"
- Nusholtz
November 2, 2012 at 5:10pm
Nusholtz, irony, et al, I will vote for Obama on Tuesday, if you promise to stop talking about Bush
- Nicomachus
November 2, 2012 at 5:47pm
OK OK, I get it, enough. But how about talking about Benghazi as a tragedy and the sign of something that needs to be fixed urgently (including a higher priority for diplomacy security) and dropping the grotesque cover-up and conspiracy stories? That might help.
- ironyroad
November 2, 2012 at 6:39pm
If there's a PV/EC split, it will be directly referrable to severely depressed Democratic turnout in the northeast due to Sandy, and no it woukdnt make a damn bit if difference. Any Repub who starts moaning about the popular vote--not that I think a split very likely--just start chanting, "George W Bush! George W Bush!"
- AaronW
November 2, 2012 at 8:26pm
icarus-r, raygun, Blah blah blah-blah-blah (blah-blahblahblahblah) blah-blah blah blah. Blah!
- magboy47.
November 2, 2012 at 9:03pm
I suppose this is one argument for the electoral college. If prez were chosen by popular vote, it could take weeks to count if it's close.
- adsprung
November 2, 2012 at 9:06pm
Nusholtz, irony, et al, I will vote for Obama on Tuesday, if you promise to stop talking about Bush. Nico, If Obama wins a second term, I will never mention Bush on this site again. In a second term the president is totally responsible for what comes out of his office, especially since Obama has turned the economy around from the disastrous mess that Bush left us. But if Romney wins, Bush will be mentioned a lot, because Romney is not Bush Lite, he is Bush Heavy--in other words, Bush with a brain. A very destructive president, that. If Romney crashes the economy, there will be no government to save us. Republican voters will be screaming for the government to save them, and under a Republican president it won't be there. Good luck, voters, is all I can say.
- magboy47.
November 2, 2012 at 9:12pm