Obama loses PA and OH but BEATS McCain. Hillary wins them and LOSES to McCain.

[FlyingSquirrel]

If you're pinning all your hopes on a few big swing states... Well, see FL in 2000 and OH in 2004. Elections can be stolen, especially in just a single state. So we could see a scenario as above, with Hillary winning these two states that she's been trumpeting about, but lose to McCain in the General Election.

Here are Pollster's numbers today for some swing-ish states. I won't bother with the ones in which both Hillary and Obama are behind, for now. For the sake of argument I'll give either one a state even if they are ahead by the barest of margins in the polls.

MN: Hillary and Obama lead McCain. 10 EV
OR: Hillary and Obama lead McCain. 7 EV

AR: Hillary leads McCain. 6 EV
OH: Hillary leads McCain. 20 EV
PA: Hillary leads McCain. 21 EV
WV: Hillary leads McCain. 5 EV

CO: Obama leads McCain. 9 EV
IA: Obama leads McCain. 7 EV
MI: Obama leads McCain. 17 EV
NV: Obama leads McCain. 5 EV
NH: Obama leads McCain. 4 EV
NM: Obama leads McCain. 5 EV
WA: Obama leads McCain. 11 EV
WI: Obama leads McCain. 10 EV

-----

TOTAL: 69 to Hillary, 85 to Obama

Giving both a base of 172 EV's from Blue states that Dems have won by an average of 10% or more in the past two elections, that leaves Hillary with 29 more EV's to come up with vs. 13 for Obama in order to win the election.

More importantly, Clinton leads McCain in just six states compared to Obama's ten states. That improves McCain's chances as it reduces the number of states he has to focus on (and possibly steal the vote in).

Add in the fact that Obama is only 2.2% behind McCain in OH, and 0.7% behind McCain in PA, and you start to get an idea of how much better Obama's chances are than Hillary's against McCain.

But wait, there's more: In the states Obama leads McCain while Hillary trails him, Obama's lead is an average of 3.5% while Hillary trails him by an average of 5.7%!

So Hillary would essentially have to make up a difference of 9.2%, on average in these states to enjoy the same overall lead that Obama has right now in those states.

I'd say the person leading McCain in more states (and more EV's) has the better chance. Prove me wrong somehow....

:shrug:

P.S. These are not numbers of Hillary vs Obama in each state, they are numbers of Hillary vs McCain and Obama vs McCain - for those who may not bother to follow the link. So they're relevant.

[TheDonkey]

1. k+r, better believe SDs see this

[splat]

2. Prove you wrong? Easy. The election's not today

Once it becomes a twofer, Hillary can beat McCain. Obama probably can't.

[FlyingSquirrel]

3. Um, ok

So you think the person who's ahead in fewer states with fewer EV's (and is behind by an average gap of 9% in the states that her opponent leads McCain, while her opponent is only behind by an average gap of 1.75% in the electoral-rich states of PA and OH), has the better chance to win.

And you base this on the fact that the election is not today.

Your argument is pure pigeonsplat, splat.

Also - once it became a twofer between Hillary and Obama, she started losing. How is this gonna be better for her against McCain?

[TheDoorbellRang]

6. Because Y's a crooked letter...oh

I guess you were looking for logical, mathematical reasoning. My bad.

I see you're not buying the ipse dixit arguments, FS. :D

[RaleighNCDUer]

4. Based on what evidence? nt

[TheDonkey]

5. Obviously the poster has some sort of magic crystal ball, duuuuh.

;)

:rofl:

[splat]

10. Based on what evidence? The election is in November. Geesh.

[RaleighNCDUer]

12. LOL

You are really good at playing dumb.

If you are playing dumb.

[Orangepeel]

8. my crystal ball says the opposite

:shrug:

Clinton would have to start from scratch with a completely different campaign, because the "experience at 3 am" one she's running isn't going to win against McCain. She won't get young new voters out (that's always very hard to do and Obama's ahead in the primary because he's proved he can do it) and she will get Clinton haters out.

[kwenu]

7. No one buys this garbage. None of it is relevant until the nominees are declared.

Superdelegates are not going to overturn a candidate with the lead in pledged delegates and the popular votes. And certainly not for a candidate that has so trashed the rules of party loyalty.

[FlyingSquirrel]

9. Man you must not have actually read it.

Otherwise you wouldn't be calling it "garbage" since it obviously shows your candidate (Obama, I'm just taking a WILD guess at that) with the better chance of winning the GE against McCain.

Funny, it's garbage if it supports Hillary and not garbage if it supports Obama - am I right?

[kwenu]

11. Have a poll with the nominees of the two parties and then I'll pay attention.

Not one party with a presumptive nominee with nothing to do while the other party is still in a contest for it's nominee.

Until then, it is garbage. I don't believe you're a moron, so I know, you know better.

[FlyingSquirrel]

14. That makes it even that much more impressive that Obama's leading in

so many of the swing states. And is only behind in PA and OH by margins that are within the margin of error. It can only get better for him once he's the nominee. Sure, it can get better for Clinton as well once she's the nominee - but she is 9 points behind him and so would have a much larger hill (no pun intended) to climb to gain the lead in those states.

[meow mix]

13. yup. Clintons Jurassic Strategy Loses. Obama/Dean Strategy is a Win.

this is why when hillary supporters cry over OH it only proves they have no idea what they are talking about.

[FlyingSquirrel]

15. Thanks, that was my basic argument.

Still lookin' for someone to prove it wrong.

Aside from the person who said "the election's not today", which doesn't really prove the premise of the argument wrong - just makes the obvious point that things can change. Duh, of course things can change - among those things that can change are, Obama could take the lead over McCain in PA and OH. The point is, what's more probable? For Obama to overcome a 1-3% deficit in PA and OH, or Hillary to overcome a 9% deficit in enough of the other states to bring her up to the same level as Obama?

And if Obama DID overcome those small deficits to win PA and OH, he'd have a total of 128 EV's in all 12 states which would bring his total to 298 (28 more than needed).

For Hillary to reach the same number, she'd have to overcome an average 6.3% deficit in CO, IA, MI, WA and WI, plus one more state (perhaps NV, NM or NH).

Much tougher job for her. But wait, she says! Florida! Floridaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

Ok, sure. She's doing better than Obama in FL. Still losing to McCain and the Repugs still control things in that state. You wanna take a chance on Florida again? She and McCain split the senior vote and what else does she have going for her? And she'd still need at least 3 other states besides FL to accomplish what Obama does just by overcoming, again, a 2.2% deficit in OH and a 0.7% deficit in PA.

(Sorry to get so long-winded in reply to someone who actually agrees with me, but now I can just link to this post in reply to someone else's upcoming argument... which I'm sure is coming any minute now. Any minute.......) :)

[FlyingSquirrel]

16. More GRAPHIC presentation of electoral difference btwn O & C

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x5524423

[walldude]

17. FUCK! Are you all fucking blind?

McCain said today he would vote against the bill to give better health care and school tuition to the troops. McCain told the troops today to go fuck themselves. For a guy running on a "war hero" and a "war" platform, this should sink him. His tenth anti-troop vote in a row. But will it? No. Why? Because we are too fucking busy worrying about Michelle Obama's bra and Hillary doing shots with the locals.

If we lose to McCain we have no one to blame but ourselves.

[PerfectSage]

18. Kick & Recommend. Great post.

[FlyingSquirrel]

19. Kickin' cause I'm about to start a new post with a graphic (see below)

to further describe the situation