Obama's Electoral Math Getting Trickier

If the electoral map wasn't looking difficult enough for President Obama in 2012, consider that the electoral math is about to get much more daunting for him. New Census figures released on Friday estimate that blue states in the Midwest and Northeast are due to lose 10 electoral votes (and 10 seats in Congress), and states in the West and South are going to gain a net 10.

Obama won easily in 2008 with 365 electoral votes, but 2012 is going to look more like the "trench-warfare" battles of 2000 and 2004, in which we were a "49 percent nation." 

The Bush-Kerry election is a good example. If John Kerry had won Ohio, he would have won 279 electoral votes, enough to clear the 270 hurdle and win the presidency. But under the 2012 reapportionment, if Kerry had won Ohio, he would have claimed only 269 and still lost to George W. Bush. 

When Franklin D. Roosevelt racked up his big victories in the 1930s, his home state of New York was indeed worthy of the name the Empire State. It commanded 47 electoral votes, while Florida, for example, had only seven. In 2012, Florida and New York will be on par with 29 electoral votes each. 

In Roosevelt's day, the electoral map was titled toward Democrats and the industrial Northeast. In Obama's time, it has shifted to more conservative, rural, and suburban states in the West and South. As the map below from the New York Times shows, small states will always have disproportionate influence -- but some of those small states in the South are getting bigger by the day.