The States Obama Must Win to be Reelected in 2012

I've come up with the following map of states that Barack Obama must win in order to get the 270 electoral college votes needed to be reelected in 2012. It's a best-case scenario for the president that gets him to 272 votes in the Electoral College.

His campaign advisers understand this. His opponents understand this. If I can figure this out, so does any campaign adviser worth their salt.

Unfortunately, in some of the states, like Pennsylvania, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and Colorado, Barack Obama's approval numbers are below 50%, which means he's got an uphill climb to keep those states. Also gumming up the president's reelection chances is the enthusiasm gap between Democrats and Republicans. Democrats had a bigger enthusiasm gap in the 2006 and 2008 elections, while the Republicans had a bigger enthusiasm gap in 2010. Currently, according to Gallup, the Democrats have lost their enthusiasm advantage from four years ago.

All a Republican candidate has to do is flip one of the states listed above, and they win the election.

Many spin-misters might tell you that a state like Minnesota is 'in play.' Forget it. In a close election, especially an election where there is an incumbent, states are generally hard to flip. It would need a lot of campaign time and resources. There is an advantage to the incumbent president, no matter which party they're from.

One might note, however, that I've flipped Indiana, Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia back to red from blue. That's because, at least with Indiana and Virginia, those two were representative of the landslide-nature of Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. Obama's campaign will probably visit Indiana and Virginia, but aside from visits, won't allocate too much money in those states because they either elected a Republican governor who've remained popular (Bob McDonnell), or still have popular Republican governor (Mitch Daniels). What about North Carolina, which has a Democratic governor? Unfortunately, Bev Perdue is not popular in her state, and will not be much help to Obama in a state that has traditionally voted Republican. What about Ohio and Florida? While these states have recently voted for Republican governors, these governors do not have high popularity ratings. However, Barack has even lower popularity ratings in these states, and therefore I'd be shocked if anyone thinks they're remaining 'blue' during the next election cycle. Will they be up for grabs? Their electoral votes are too numerous to ignore, but deep in the bowels of Obama's campaign headquarters, they're going to allocate more resources in Pennsylvania and North Carolina than Ohio and Florida. Pennsylvania is critical to the president's reelection chances. He cannot allow it to flip to red and have any hope of remaining in office another four years.

Agree? Disagree? Go to 270toWin.com and make your own map. Compare maps from previous presidential elections, and you can form an opinion based on historical data.

But don't just take my word for it. Even prediction markets like InTrade show a < 50% chance that Barack Obama will be re-elected as of mid-September. (Note the spike on May 1st coincided with the death of Osama bin Ladin.)

In a future post: deep, deep in the bowels of the president's campaign office in Chicago-- making moves to drop Joe Biden and have Hillary Clinton be the VP.

And deep, deep, DEEP somewhere in Bill Clinton's offices; if the poll numbers continue to drop for Barack, maneuvers to have Barack step down, like LBJ, and have Hillary run as president.

Hey, you can't make this stuff up.