Watching the Election The race between Gore and Bush has gone down to the wire. In a few days, voters across the country go to the booths and cast their ballots. Bush offers change and a new direction, while Gore offers the security of familiar policies. If Gore wins, he will be only the second sitting Vice-President to be promoted to the Presidency by election this century. The only other to accomplish this was George Bush’s father.
Watching the returns come in from my vantage in Orange County, California is nice because I don’t have to stay up very late to hear all the results from across the country. But the Presidential race will be decided hours before the polls close in California. In fact, this race is going to turn on the outcome of just a handful of state votes in the East and Midwest.
Unlike most countries, Americans don’t actually vote directly for their President. Instead, there is a body called the Electoral College which meets and casts the votes that decide who gets to be President. The voters in each state vote for Electors who are pledged to their candidate, and will cast votes for that candidate in the College. Now each state does not get an equal representation in the Electoral College. The number of Electors is the sum of the state’s US senators and congressmen. All states are assigned two senators but the congressmen are determined by population. California, with its huge population, has 52 congressman and two senators, hence 54 electoral votes. Wyoming has only one congressman and hence 3 electoral votes. Because even the smallest states get three votes as a minimum, these small states are given slightly more weight in the College than their population alone would merit. As most of these small states are solidly Republican, it does give the Republicans a slight extra advantage.
Given this system, it is possible to win several states by narrow margins and get crushed in a few large states. If that happens, the College could elect a candidate President, even though he lost the actual popular vote nationwide. This odd outcome occurred twice in the 19th century. If 25,000 voters in Ohio and Hawaii had switched their votes in 1976, Gerald Ford would have beaten Jimmy Carter while still losing the popular vote overall.
In most elections, small advantages in the popular vote result in big wins in the Electoral College. Kennedy beat Nixon in 1960 by less than one point in total votes, but crushed him in the Electoral College. This election though is going to be very close, not just in total votes, but also in the Electoral College, perhaps one of the closest votes in history.
With a total of 539 Electors, the winner needs 270 votes to clinch election. Right now, the country breaks down with about 160 solid Electoral votes for each candidate. Gore can count on New York’s 33 and California’s 54 among others. Bush has solid backing from Texas’s 32 and many of the western states. Both candidates need to pick up 110 votes to get to 270. The campaign will be decided by the outcome in about 9 battleground states, and these are the ones to watch when results start coming in.
The first two “must wins” for each side are New Jersey and Florida. Gore has to win New Jersey’s 15 Electoral votes. If he loses that, in my estimation, he will lose the election. Conversely, Bush has to pick up Florida’s 25. If that goes Democrat, the election will be over.
If both sides get through those two, then the next phase will be Pennsylvania (23 votes) and Ohio (21 votes). If either candidate wins both of those states, you can turn the TV off. If they get a split, then the action moves to the Midwest, specifically Illinois (22), Michigan (18), Kentucky (8), Wisconsin (11), and Missouri (11). These five states have a total of 70 votes, and whoever gets 40 votes out of them, in whatever combination, will win.
The only way I stay in suspense for long is if they manage to split the votes fairly evenly through those 5 states. Then we could have this election turn on Washington and Oregon, but most observers feel that those states, which have voted Democrat since 1988, will go with Gore. Alaska is solidly Republican, but it is evened out by the solidly Democrat Hawaii.
The other race to watch is Hilary Clinton’s senate battle in New York against Rick Lazio. I saw them debate, and they obviously despise each other. That is going to be as interesting an outcome as Gore vs. Bush. So who’s going to win? I’m guessing Bush in a squeaker.
Last modified on