[EL] Will Republicans embrace the National Vote Planin 2012?

[sean at impactpolicymanagement.com]

The question can be asked the other way too - would Democrats, generally somewhat more favorable to effectively ditching the Electoral College through the NPV effort, suddenly rediscover the wisdom of the states as politically sovereign entities selecting the President?

Sean Parnell
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael McDonald <mmcdon at gmu.edu>
Sender: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu
Date: Tue, 22 May 2012 14:03:48 
To: <law-election at uci.edu>
Reply-To: mmcdon at gmu.edu
Subject: [EL] Will Republicans embrace the National Vote Planin 2012?

There is an interesting early dynamic emerging in the polling this cycle.
Romney is neck and neck with Obama nationally, but Obama is leading in key
states for the race for the Electoral College. 

Some reasons why this may be true is that the economy is doing better in key
battleground states, while Romney hurt himself with his auto-bailout
position in states like Ohio. The economy is doing the worst in some urban
Democratic strongholds, so Obama may be able to lose support in these areas
while still winning these states by a comfortable margin. And Obama does
very poorly in deep red states. In other words, there does not appear to be
a uniform national  vote swing from the 2008 to 2012 election.

This raises interesting questions: if Obama beats Romney in the Electoral
College but loses in the popular vote, will Republicans change their tune
about the National Vote Plan? Could we see strategic Republican state
governments sign on to the NPV in the waning days of the general election if
the dynamic I note persists?

============
Dr. Michael P. McDonald
Associate Professor, George Mason University
Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution

                             Mailing address:
(o) 703-993-4191             George Mason University
(f) 703-993-1399             Dept. of Public and International Affairs
mmcdon at gmu.edu               4400 University Drive - 3F4
http://elections.gmu.edu     Fairfax, VA 22030-4444



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