Friday, November 7, 2008

Obama gets one more electoral vote -- in Nebraska

Nebraska is one of only two states that splits its electoral college votes by Congressional district -- the other is Maine. Late tonight, officials confirmed that with absentee ballots, Obama won Nebraska 2 which includes Omaha, reducing McCain's "win" in the state to 4-1. Credit that to Obama's playing with Howard Dean's 50-state strategy and deciding to open up three field offices in the city when conventional wisdom -- including Hillary Clinton's -- said that the state (along with so many others that Obama ended up winning) was a lost cause and that the sole focus should have been on Ohio, Florida and no where else.

Proof that Dean was right all along. Omaha, for heaven's sake! But I think Nebraska's on to something. If every state allocated its votes by district -- with the statewide winner getting the two bonus points representing the Senators -- it would more accurately reflect the will of the people. It probably would have ensured Gore and not Bush won eight years ago, among other things. (Probably wouldn't work in DC, though, since it's a district, county and city combined; and it's been Democrat pretty much since it got "home rule" in the 1970s.)

Meanwhile, Missouri which had been called for McCain went back into toss-up mode with ballots still being counted -- three days later (?). So that means Obama's college vote is now up to 365, McCain is down to 162 with 11 up in the air.

Another thing I noticed late yesterday is this map from the NYT that shows the vote shift between 2004 and 2008. Note that even in the states which are still "red" the number of counties where Democrats increased their vote share. Overall the donkey made gains in 78% of counties across America This shift is seismic and for the foreseeable future a long term one as well unless the GOP gets back to the grassroots and renews itself from the bottom-up as the Dems did.

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