As a former English teacher and student of literature my command of mathematics is pretty much limited to basic arithmetic. Addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and percentages are easy for me, but once the x’s and o’s appear or anything to do with geometry I’m completely lost.
Fortunately the mathematics, more accurately the arithmetic of politics, is pretty easy. It always plays an important role, but this year it seems to be more important than ever.
Let’s look at the initial set of interesting numbers—19 and 3. The first number is how many Republican presidential candidates entered the primaries, an extraordinary number that made Donald Trump’s front-runner status possible. With a relatively small percentage of the votes he was able to accumulate more delegates that slipped by the other candidates who were, in effect, divided and conquered.
On the Democratic side there were three candidates, which narrowed to two rather quickly when Gov. Martin O’Malley dropped out. It’s possible that Hillary Clinton’s front-runner status would be enhanced if there were several other candidates to siphon votes away from Sen. Bernie Sanders.
The next set of numbers defines the delegate total necessary to win the nominations. The GOP primary leader, Donald Trump, needs 1237 to put his name on the ballot in November. The Republican establishment is trying frantically to block him from reaching this number before July so they can possibly pick another, more electable candidate on a second ballot at their convention.
Hillary Clinton needs 2383 delegates to sew up the nomination, and she has a huge but not insurmountable lead, especially if you’re a Sanders supporter. Many of them threaten to stay home or vote for a Republican if Bernie is deprived of the nomination, and a number of his disciples have already convinced themselves that any state he’s lost is a result of cheating and underhanded dealings by the Clinton camp.
Those are empty threats, however, unless they live in a contested or swing state.
Here are some more important numbers: 270, 247, 206, 538, 85, and 7.
The first number, 270, is the number of electoral votes needed to win the presidency.
According to political analyst Larry Sabato, the conventional wisdom is that Democrats have a solid 247 electoral votes going in, as opposed to the 206 that are definite for the Republicans.
There are 538 electoral votes in total, and that means there are 85 up for grabs.
Those 85 are in 7 swing states. Here are the states and the delegates they are assigned: Colorado (9) Florida (29) Iowa (6) Nevada (6) New Hampshire (4) Ohio (18) and Virginia (13)
What this means is that the Democratic nominee only needs 23 electoral votes from 7 swing states to be elected president. That’s not very difficult in the scheme of things. In 2012 Barack Obama won 332 electoral votes to Willard Romney’s 206. Doesn’t that tell you everything you need to know?
It also means that liberals will not have to emigrate to Cape Breton, Vancouver, or Costa Rica. Their lives will go on as usual.
Everything will go on as usual. On the night of January 17, 2017, Mitch McConnell and a group of Republican operatives will meet to plot how to make Hillary Clinton a one-term president. So it goes.
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So the hardcore Bernie crowd is threatening to risk contributing to the downfall of America by staying home or voting for Trump (or some other anointed one)? Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Susan Sarandon the ultra liberal actress talked about that yesterday, and her response to Trump getting elected was that he’d blow things up and the “revolution” would come faster.
Wow! Carlo is math challenged… who woulda thunk it?
Math-wise this is predominantly a Game Theory election, standard statistics and arithmetic won’t cut it. It’s pretty advanced math stuff but there are ways to shortcut around it. There always is in math.