Building upon DemFromCT's
super post below, which points out the disparity between the national race and the battleground state polls, I raise anew a question I posed in a
Washington Post op-ed last April:
Could Kerry actually lose the popular vote yet win the Electoral College?
With each passing day I'm more convinced that this scenario is at least possible. Not probable, nor even likely - because such "misfired" elections are rare. (Although we had two of them within three cycles, in 1876 and again in 1888.) But it's possible, especially given that the battleground v. non-battleground poll discrepancies ratify the fact that the economies of the swing states are performing worse than national averages.
How might Kerry win by losing, just as Bush did four years ago?
Well, for starters, in the nine states that gave Al Gore his widest total vote margins - which, by definition, are either large states or overwhelmingly Democratic ones (or both) - Kerry is currently leading Bush, but by smaller margins. In terms of net popular votes, those nine (California through Pennsylvania) alone gave Gore a 5.8 million-vote lead over Bush in 2000. Here they are, listed in order of Gore's 2000 "surplus" votes (it is a winner-take-all, so we can call them surpluses), followed by Kerry's current polling lead (according to electoral-vote.org, as of Oct 17), and Gore's winning margin from 2000:
- New York: 1,704,442 surplus Democratic votes; 23 percent Kerry lead [25 percent Gore margin]
- California: 1,293,774; 8 [12]
- Massachusetts: 737,985; 14 [27]
- Illinois: 569,605; 16 [12]
- New Jersey: 504,677; 2 [16]
- Maryland: 331,985; 15 [16]
- Connecticut: 254,921; 9 [17]
- Michigan: 217,279; 8 [5]
- Pennsylvania: 204,840; 3 [4]
Notice that in seven states (Illinois and Michigan excepted), Kerry's lead at the moment is less than Gore's final margin. If the numbers hold, Kerry will not lose
any of these nine states - aside from the post-reapportionment net loss of six Democratic electoral votes. Notice, too, that the difference between Gore's margin and Kerry's poll numbers are dramatic in Massachusetts, New Jersey and, though smaller by percentage, still significant in California and New York because just a few percentage points in the two biggest Democratic states translates into hundreds of thousands fewer Democratic votes.
You may be inclined to say, "So what? That's just the nine biggest Democratic margin states." Ok, so let's multiply the current poll numbers for Kerry-Bush in all 50 states+DC against either the total votes cast in each state in 2000, or even the two-party subset of Gore+Bush (minus Nader, et al.) net votes cast. Well, guess what: Bush would win the popular vote by 712K votes in the first case, and 761K in the second. That wouldn't mean much, but for this fact: Based on those very percentages, as electoral-vote.com has them for today, Kerry is ahead of Bush in the Electoral College, 253-247, with Florida, Iowa and New Hampshire tied.
If Bush closes in Florida, he'll almost certainly win the electoral vote as well as the popular vote. But if Kerry ekes out a win either in Ohio or Florida, both of which are tight races, and carries those big nine states by narrower net margins that Gore did at the same time Bush is holding or even improving his margins in his own 2000-victory states, the president could find himself leaving office the same way he arrived: With a surplus of votes in the wrong states.
Wouldn't that be a hoot?