The Occasional Observer

We all know that the meat of the normal distribution curve right now involves an Obama victory. But there is still a solid chunk of one side that involves a very close race. How close? Well, I could easily see a scenario where we end up near, or even at, a 269-269 tie. Check out this map, if you want to see a plausible tie outcome.

If the race is tied, Obama will be the next President, 99%. There has been some confusion about whether the present or newly elected House would ultimately cast the vote (one vote per state delegation), but either way, the Dems will have the edge.

But what's strange about the map above, is that the apparent tie may not actually be a tie.

In two states, Maine and Nebraska, state law does NOT allocate electoral votes on a winner-take-all basis. It is done on a congressional district basis. So in each state, the state wide winner gets 2 EVs for the state-wide win (representing the 2 US Senators), and then the winner within each Congressional District gets one EV per congressional district.

And we have seen in the recent past that one CD in Maine (the northern rural areas) trends more red than the state as a whole, while the CD around Omaha trends more blue than Nebraska as a whole.

Could McCain pick off the 2nd CD in Maine, and keep all of Nebraska's EV's? If so, even under the map proposed above, McCain could obtain a 270-268 EV win.