[EL] 2008 to 2012 what happened to MO and IN?

[Rob Richie]

Doug,

This provides a chance for FairVote to do some mild chestbumping.

In December 2008, we released a report on what we called the shrinking
battleground that we saw as having been demonstrated in the 2008 election.
Dan Tokaji was filling in for Rick that day in blogging, and below is how
he linked to it on the election law blog -- introducing our report by
saying "countering the conventional wisdom..."

What we saw in 2008 was what this election cycle has confirmed: that in a
really close year, the number of states with a chance of tipping the
election had in fact decreased in 2008 rather than increased. The fact that
Barack Obama won by more than 7%  gave an misleading impression of some
states being in play that in fact wouldn't have been in play if the
national margin had been more like it had been in 2000 or 2004.

Missouri and Indiana are states that COULD have been competitive this year,
with relatively small shifts toward Democrats, but instead they seem to
have shifted slightly the other way. Indeed, that seems to be the pattern.
Most states that show a partisan shift are shifting farther away from the
50-50 competitive line rather than toward it.

As it is, most analysts see fewer than 10 real swing states right now -
perhaps as few as 7. None are surprises, based on the 2008 data. And none
of the non-swing states are surprises either -- if I were to pick on state
that I would have thought would be seen as more competitive in 2012 than
most people say it is, I would say Minnesota.

See more in the report linked below.
Rob

http://electionlawblog.org/?m=200812&paged=3
“2008′s Shrinking Battleground” <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=11667>
Posted on December 5, 2008 5:37 am <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=11667> by Dan
Tokaji <http://electionlawblog.org/?author=5>

Countering the conventional wisdom, FairVote argues in this press
release<http://fairvote.org/tracker/?page=27&pressmode=showspecific&showarticle=230>
that
“2008 marked a record low in the number of competitive states since 1960
and a record high in the number of completely non-competitive states.”

On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 5:37 PM, Doug Hess <douglasrhess at gmail.com> wrote:

> I know this is not a psephology list, but I wonder why MO and IN are
> viewed by many to be strongly Romney states. Granted, IN going for
> Obama in 2008 was surprising (at least to me, and I suspect others).
> And MO in 2008 was won by McCain by the skin of his teeth. But why are
> both states considered out of Obama's reach now (see Nate Silver's
> summaries of polls and some predictions in the link)?
>
>
> http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/25/aug-25-an-above-average-likely-voter-gap-for-romney/#more-33647
>
> Doug
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>



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Rob Richie
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