The Obama landslide scenario

The Obama landslide scenario

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It’s definitely possible that Mitt Romney will be elected president on Tuesday. And there’s also a chance that Romney will fall short in the Electoral College but still receive more popular votes than Barack Obama, an officially meaningless achievement that would nonetheless let Republicans claim that Obama had been rejected by the majority of voters and had gained a second term only through a constitutional quirk.
But another possibility has come into focus in the race’s closing days: a clean Obama victory, more thorough and sweeping than just about anyone expected.

Romney’s path to 270, as I wrote last week, can be split into two phases. The first requires him to sweep five traditionally Republican states that Obama won in 2008: Indiana, North Carolina, Florida, Virginia and Colorado. Do this (and hold onto all of the other states that John McCain took in ’08) and Romney will have 257 electoral votes. From there, he could win the election by taking Ohio, or Pennsylvania, or some combination of Wisconsin and New Hampshire, Iowa, or Nevada.