[EL] States in Play

Tue Aug 28 16:14:55 PDT 2012

       Biden was in Minnesota the other day.

             Best,

             Daniel H. Lowenstein
             Director, Center for the Liberal Arts and Free Institutions (CLAFI)
             UCLA Law School
             405 Hilgard
             Los Angeles, California 90095-1476
             310-825-5148

________________________________
From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu [law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Marty Lederman [lederman.marty at gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, August 28, 2012 3:27 PM
To: Rob Richie
Cc: Doug Hess; Election Law
Subject: Re: [EL] States in Play

Does anyone know if the campaigns are making significant investments in any states other than Ohio, Virginia, Florida, Wisconsin, Colorado, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Iowa -- and, I suppose, possibly Michigan, North Carolina and/or Pennsylvania?

Or are those 8-11 states where all the action (that is, uncertainty) is?

On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 6:17 PM, Rob Richie <rr at fairvote.org<mailto:rr at fairvote.org>> wrote:
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<mailto: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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