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This year’s Electoral College looks almost identical to the 2008 Electoral College that propelled Barack Obama to victory for his first term.
The only difference between the Electoral College maps was that Indiana and North Carolina went for the GOP in 2012 but for the Democrats in 2008. This year, all Nebraska’s electoral votes were awarded to the GOP candidate with none of the district splitting that occurred four years ago.
The Congressional District system, or split district system, present in both Nebraska and Maine, awards electoral votes proportionally, based on which candidate wins a majority of votes in a particular congressional district, rather than the system in place in the rest of the country.
The Electoral College is a system in which American citizens vote for electors, who in turn pledge to cast their votes for the president in December. Except for the two states using the split district system described above, these electoral votes are awarded based upon which candidate receives the majority of votes in the whole state in a winner-takes-all system.
Though the map of electoral votes is nearly the same, the percentages by which states were won appear different than those from four years ago. As of 4 p.m. Wednesday, 48 states had reported 95 percent or more of their districts results. Oregon and Washington had reported 85 percent and 52 percent of their districts, respectively.
President Obama carried 26 states in 2012, but 23 of those were carried by slimmer wins than in 2008. The average drop in Obama’s lead was 2.3 points in these 23 states.
Drops ranged from 1 to 5 points, the latter of which happened in Illinois. The most common drop in victory margins was in states Obama won was 3 points, occurring in seven states, which was followed by drops of 2 points and 1 point, which occurred in six states each.
Obama won New York and Rhode Island with the same margins in 2008 and 2012. His victory margin in New Jersey increased by 1 point, from 57 percent in 2008 to 58 percent in 2012.
The District of Columbia’s margin was nearly the same in both elections, dropping 92 percent to 91 percent of the vote for Obama in 2008. The GOP candidate won 7 percent in both elections.
Mitt Romney made nearly universal percentage-point pickups, not only in states that Obama won in both 2008 and 2012, but also in states that McCain won in 2008.
In four states — Maine, Rhode Island, New York and Louisiana — Romney didn’t make gains compared to McCain’s 2008 totals. In New Jersey and Alaska, Romney’s percentage of the vote dropped compared to 2008 totals, by 1 point in New Jersey and by an unexpected 4 points in Alaska.
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These GOP gains across the board allowed Romney to carry Indiana and North Carolina, with 5.09 point and 1.6 point gains, respectively, pushing those states into the GOP camp. In both cases, the Republican gains reflected a loss for Obama between 2008 and 2012 of 5.95 points in Indiana and a loss of 1.7 points in North Carolina.
Romney’s highest gain over McCain’s vote totals was an 11 point boost in Utah. Most of Romney’s strong gains, which are gains of 4 points or more, were in traditionally Republican states, such as the Dakotas, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Nebraska, Missouri, West Virginia and Kentucky.
However, Romney made significant gains, which are gains of 3 to 4 points, in states that have been traditionally Democratic in recently years, such as Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and Oregon.
