GOP Gains With Final Census Tally
Politico reports:
Tom Bonier, one of the Democratic Party's leading redistricting wizards, emails:
With seats shifting mostly from the Northeast and Midwest into the South and West, if you apply the new apportionment to the 2008 results, Obama loses 6 electoral votes.
In terms of the 2010 map, if you rank the states from the largest Obama margin to the largest McCain margin, Colorado was the state that put Obama over 270 (276). That does not change with the new apportionment – Colorado would now put Obama at exactly 270.
That means that there is a path to victory that does not include winning Virginia, Ohio, Florida, the 2nd CD in Nebraska, Indiana, or North Carolina. Of course, given the change in the political landscape since 2008 we would expect to see some shifting in this rank order, meaning Ohio and Florida at a minimum will have to remain top tier targets.
