Electoral College

In the last election 16 states were decided by less than 3% (the usual error in a poll). These are the real battlegrounds of the next election. Leading these in electoral votes is Florida, of course, with 27. Other hotbed battlegrounds include Minnesota, Iowa and Wisconsin; Ohio and Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

With these sixteen states essentially toss-ups, the other 34 states are pretty much locked in to vote the way they did in '00. This gives the Republicans 194 EVs and the Democrats 168 EVs.

I constructed a random number generator in Excel to assume each of these 16 states decided the president by flipping a coin. Of course, the news is that out of 500 trials, the Dems won only 156 times. This means they have a 31% chance of reclaiming the White House, based on my assumptions. Of course, the Democratic nominee could bring more states into play or could lose more states to the Republicans. But right now it looks like the Republicans are about 2 times as likely to win the presidency.

How important is Florida to the Democrats? In the 156 scenarios where they win, 116 have Florida in the victory column. This means that nearly 75% of the Dems chances of victory require a win in Florida.

My home state of Wisconsin only shows up in 54% of the winning outcomes.

Nine of the 500 outcomes (1.8%) have the field ending in a tie broken by the (currently) largely Republican House of Representatives.

Here's the list with Electoral votes and % observed in winning combination.
Florida - 27 votes - 75%
Pennsylvania - 21 votes - 71%
Ohio - 20 votes - 76%
Michigan - 17 votes - 75%
Missouri - 11 votes - 60%
Tennessee - 11 votes - 62%
Washington - 11 votes - 59%
Minnesota - 10 votes - 61%
Wisconsin - 10 votes - 54%
Oregon - 7 votes - 58%
Iowa - 7 votes - 58%
Arkansas - 6 votes - 52%
Nevada - 5 votes - 64%
New Mexico - 5 votes - 58%
Maine - 4 votes - 55%
New Hampshire - 4 votes - 49%

I should also point out that New Mexico has the best track record picking presidential winners.

Comments

[Sean]

Wow.

[JmSR]

Apology: This morning there were some exaggerated numbers in the blog entry. Somehow, Arkansas and New Hampshire which I meant to include in the swing states were lumped in with the Republican states. A new trial was run with the correct data and the info is posted here. The upshot is that Florida is less contentious than before, but still necessary in 3/4 of the simulated Democrats wins.