With the results of Hawaii, Washington, and Wisconsin Primaries in, we are getting a better sense of who the nominee will be in each Party. On the GOP side, it is a forgone conclusion that Senator John McCain will win the nomination. As far as the Democrats are concerned, Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are running neck and neck in terms of Delegates and the overall popular vote, but Obama is certainly pulling away with the momentum of pulling off ten straight victories over the last few weeks.

Although it is impossible right now to predict who will win the nomination for the Democratic Party without the seeing the results of the contests in Texas, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, I believe it is nonetheless possible to predict the outcome of the General Election in November, using the results of the primaries so far.

But First, A Different Take

Before I do that, I wanted to take a moment to point out another method, perhaps the “established” method for predicting the winner in the 2008 Election. In the established method, we would take the results of the last Presidential Election and assume as a benchmark that the Republicans would win the same states they won last time (the so-called “Red States”) and the Democrats would again win the states won by Kerry (the so-called “Blue States”). This method of looking at the electoral map is outlined (albeit from what appears to be a GOP perspective) in an intersting blog post on Patriot City. The writer describes that in order to determine who wins, the game becomes a matter of “flipping” states from one side to the next. In other words, the onus is on the Democrats to improve upon last time, rather than on the Republicans to make any new gains. The Democrats could “flip” Florida or Ohio, for example.

This method depends on the assumption that voters’ opinions are basically unchanged since the last election. I believe this traditional look at the Electoral Map is flawed, as it does not take into account the extreme dissatisfaction a majority of Americans have for GWB, the growing infatuation many Americans hold for Barack Obama, the uncertainty about the economy, the downward spiral in Iraq since 2004, the hatred many Right Wing Republicans have for John McCain, and perhaps most importantly, the overwhelming demand for change that is driving record-numbers of voters to the polls during these Primaries.

Voter Turnout: Democrats to the Polls in Record Numbers

I got the idea for this post while watching the results of the popular vote in each primary over the past couple of months. I was struck by what appeared to be an overwhelming turnout on the Democratic side, regardless of how the Republicans fared in each contest. So I decided to go back through all of the results of the primaries so far and discovered some pretty striking numbers.

I went through each state and added up how many votes each of the five major candidates (Obama, Clinton, McCain, Romney, Huckabee) on both sides received in each contest. The numbers below equal the total number of votes cast for each candidate. Here are current tallies (not including Washington and Hawaii) in terms of the popular vote for each major candidate:

Barack Obama: 10,625,401 total votes

Hilary Clinton: 10,352,875 total votes

John McCain: 5,815,561 total votes

Mitt Romney: 4,273,809 total votes

Mike Huckabee: 2,958,786 total votes

By simply looking at these numbers, it is evident that both of the Democratic candidates have mobilized more actual voters than any of the Republican candidates. By nearly a 2-1 basis, either Obama or Clinton has earned more votes than John McCain and Mitt Romney, and both of the Democrats have “out-turned-out” voters by a 3-1 basis in comparison to Mike Huckabee.

It is widely acknowledged that voter turnout has been unprecedented during this primary election cycle. And while not every General Election voter participates in the primaries for a variety of reasons, it is safe to assume that the voters who do turn out for these Primary elections will most likely vote in the General Election.

While unscientific, I believe the results here are a good indicator of a proportionate turnout during the General Election, in which (obviously) the field in that contest will be narrowed to one candidate for each party. Again, compiling the total votes of Clinton and Obama and comparing that figure against the total votes of all three Republican candidates combined, we see that Democrats have still mobilized more overall voters than the Republicans, 19,879,615-12,664,729, or 61% to 39%, indicating an overwhelming majority of support which should carry through the General Election, right?

Primaries vs. Polls

A “realist” might argue that this doesn’t match up to recent polling data, which suggests that the General Election race is much tighter than my unscientific analysis is suggesting. However, recent evidence suggest that our traditional methods for polling Registered voters, normally involving a telephone call to home phone landlines, can no longer accurately gauge the will of the electorate, especially with more and more voters under the age of 40 abandoning home landlines and using cell phones as their primary phone numbers. This vast segment of the population can no longer be accurately reached, rendering traditional polling less and less relevant.

Additionally, I would submit that what could be more accurate than an actual election to determine the will of the electorate? It is one thing for a pollster to get a potential voter to answer a few questions on the phone, but a whole new challenge for a candidate to get a voter to actually leave their home, take time off work, and cast a vote. In this way, I think the aggregate raw numbers of these recent Primary elections is a far more accurate means of predicting the will of the electorate.

The Electoral College and the “Magic Number”

What I’ve done so far is use the Primary Elections results to essentially predict the result of the popular vote in the General Election. While perhaps interesting, this analysis alone does not constitute an accurate prediction of which candidate will actually win the Presidency, because as we all know (painfully so in 2000), the popular vote does not determine the Presidency. Instead, our election system uses the Electoral College to determine a President. I’d like to talk more about this system in future posts, but the most important thing to understand about the Electoral College is the “magic number” of votes needed to secure the Presidency, which is 270.

See, the General Election for the Presidency isn’t really a national election. It is the combined result of 50 simultaneous state elections. If a candidate wins a state, he or she earns the electoral votes awarded to that state, which are based upon the size of their congressional delegation (US Senators and US Representatives combined). Big states like California and Texas have 55 and 34 electoral votes respectively, while small states like Delaware and Alaska each have three electoral votes. Thus, some states (the more populous states) are more important than others.

Predicting Electoral Votes

Again, using the results of the primaries, I went back and determined an overall winner for each state, regardless of Party. In other words, whichever candidate earned the most raw votes, “won” the state. I also employ a general assumption to use these results as a predictor the General Election: if a candidate earns the most overall votes, that candidate’s Party would win the state in the general election , regardless of which candidate is actually on the ballot at that time. For example, Mitt Romney won Michigan on the Republican side, with 337,847 votes to John McCain’s 257,521 votes. In my system, Mitt Romney wins the entire state as he earned more votes than the leading candidate on the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton, who earned 328,151 votes overall. Even though Romney will not be on the ticket in the General election, I am still awarding this state to the Republican side, as the Republican candidate earned more overall votes than the leading Democratic candidate. So, in my system the GOP candidate, which would most likely be John McCain, would earn 17 electoral votes for winning Michigan. (I recognize an inherent flaw in this system, considering that Romney was a “native son” in Michigan, which probably explains why he won more votes than any other candidate. As I have no way to adjust for this or to predict whether or not Romney might be on the ticket as the VP, thereby possibly ensuring that this result carries through to the General Election, I have no choice but to keep the State of Michigan on GOP win column, assuming that this flaw may be counterbalanced by other inherent flaws in my system. One of these flaws might be the fact that none of John Edwards’ popular votes were accounted for in my method, which may tip the balance even further towards the side of the Democrats).

State By State Electoral Vote Breakdown, by Candidate

Below is a list of each state, followed by which candidate on either side won the most overall popular votes. The number next to each of these candidates designates the Electoral votes at stake, which are “won” by the winner in each state.

Washington, DC : Obama – 3
Maryland: Obama – 10
Virginia: Obama – 13
Kansas: Obama – 6
Louisiana: Obama – 9
Washington: Obama – 11
Alabama: Obama – 9
Colorado: Obama – 9
Connecticut: Obama – 7
Delaware: Obama – 3
Georgia: Obama – 15
Illinois: Obama – 21
Minnesota: Obama – 10
Missouri: Obama – 11
North Dakota: Obama – 3
South Carolina: Obama – 8
Hawaii: Obama – 3
Wisconsin: Obama – 10
Iowa: Obama – 7

OBAMA TOTAL: 168 Electoral Votes

Arkansas: Clinton – 6
California: Clinton – 55
Massachusetts: Clinton – 12
New Jersey: Clinton – 15
New York: Clinton – 31
Oklahoma: Clinton – 7
Tennessee: Clinton – 11
Florida: Clinton – 27
New Hampshire: Clinton – 4
CLINTON TOTAL: 168 Electoral Votes

Maine: Romney – 4
Alaska: Romney – 3
Utah: Romney – 5
Nevada: Romney – 5
Michigan: Romney – 17
ROMNEY TOTAL: 34 Electoral Votes

Arizona: McCain – 10
MCCAIN TOTAL: 10 Electoral Votes

As you can see, no single candidate would have enough Electoral Votes to win the Presidency at this point. As these numbers do not include the results for Washington, New Mexico, Idaho, and Nebraska on the Republican side, nor Montana, West Virginia, and Wyoming on the Democratic side, nor Ohio, Wisconsin, Rhode Island, Texas, Vermont, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Indiana, North Carolina, Kentucky, Oregon, and South Dakota for both sides, it is not yet a complete picture. But that doesn’t stop me from using the data in hand to predict a winner in the General, nonetheless.

Re-Writing the Electoral Map: Landslide Winner Predicted

With just these partial numbers in hand it is already possible to predict a winner using my system, in this case by landslide, if you add up the “current” electoral votes by Party.

TOTAL GOP: 44 Electoral Votes

TOTAL DEM: 336 Electoral Votes

As you can see, Democratic candidates are winning more popular votes and more states than any of the Republican candidates. I predict it will be a landslide victory for the Democratic candidate, whether it’s Hillary or Obama, a la Reagan’s victories in 1980 (489-49) and 1984 (525-13) and George H.W. Bush’s victory in 1988 (426-111).

The Democratic victory in 2008 will in effect re-write the “Red State/Blue State” Electoral map we’ve grown accustomed to over the last few election cycles. The dynamism of Obama or the warm memories that many working class Americans hold for the Clintons will sway voters in Southern states and Western states that voted for George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004.

It is clear that Americans want change. In 2008, they will get it.


RELATED POSTS: Clinton’s Fuzzy Math: The Fiction of “Winning” the Popular Vote, Who Should I Vote For?, Part III: Not Mitt Romney!, Who Should I Vote For?, Part II: John McCain, Who Should I Vote For?, Part I.