A Question About Hillary's Electoral Math

I've noticed something more than a few times here that I have to try to find out a bit more about. Amidst the swirling, back-and-forth arguments about everything from race to dead ex-Presidents, some people have found themselves arguing over whether Hillary or Obama is more likely to win the general election.

This surprised me because, no matter what you think of their policy differences, campaign tactics, etc., everyone here probably knows that vote totals are a result of a two-step mathematical process. There are the percentages of an given population that support one candidate or the other, and then there are those who actually VOTE for their choice. You multiply the percentage by the turnout, and, presto-change-o, there are your results.

Now, even in talking to a couple of the Hillary supporters I know, they've been smart enough to acknowledge some concern over Hillary's turnout problem. I think most of us can agree that more usual Democratic voters have declared that they wouldn't vote for Hillary if she were nominated than the numbers that have declared that they wouldn't vote for Obama. In fact, I think most of us would agree that the former number is very much larger than the latter - just eyeball those respective claims on this board for a week. There's a huge difference. My interactions with people in real life have shown the same pattern.

Hillary also has the opposite problem - more Independents and Republicans have sworn to show up to vote AGAINST her than any have for Obama. In fact, as, again, everyone here should know, part of the Obama storyline has been his ability to appeal to huge amounts of independents and even some Republicans. Even ignoring his ability to convince some of them to vote for him, there are many out there who claim their only motivation to vote Republican in the next election will be if Hillary is the Democratic nominee.

So, given those two factors - Hillary stands to lose the most typical Democratic voters who have already sworn not to vote for her, and also stands to face the largest number of voters motivated simply be the desire to vote AGAINST her - how can anyone claim that she's the most likely to win the general election? You can throw out abstract arguments about being better at "tough politics" or having a better "campaign machine" all you want, but not only are those elements absolutely impossible to prove, but they mostly affect the very small chunk of the American population that is very politically-savvy and spends its time perusing message boards to talk about Diebold machines. Those numbers pale in comparison to simplistic turnout math of the millions of average Americans who, come next November, won't be able to tell you a single fact about Hillary other than that "they don't like her." And the turnout math says that Hillary is most likely to lose, not most likely to win.

or use the word "math". There are so many variables.

First, people say they won't vote for Clinton, but in the course of the campaign she
might win over some of those types. ( "I'll never vote for Kerry" was heard too.)

Secondly, your take on all this might be skewed by reading DU and other liberal sites.

Third, electoral math shows us that all a Democrat has to do ( any Dem) is win the Gore
states plus one medium purple state or two smaller states.

Finally, it depends on the Republican. Every single one of their guys has negatives.
How do you know which Republicans will stay home? If it is Romney or Rudi, the evangelicals
will sit out. Huckabee... the traditional Republicans, McCain.. the McCain haters.

It is just too early to say and it is too much speculation to use this argument to devalue Clinton.

First, I do hope you understand if I say that trying to compare the sheer number of folks who have expressed *extreme* dislike for Hillary and sworn never to vote for her to the number that said they would never vote for Kerry is like comparing Texas to Rhode Island. If your argument is that this is no different than any sort of dislike that's been expressed against another Democratic candidate in the past few elections, then you live in a completely different world than I do.

Second, I'm not a hardcore liberal at all - I'm quite the political enigma, and I read sites of all types. I like different points of view. People and websites of all allegiances and creeds have been remarkably similar when it comes to containing a chunk of ABC people. More importantly, how exactly would reading liberal sites skew my analysis towards determining that Clinton would lose? The Clinton hate on the right is very well-known - wouldn't reading liberal sites actually insulate me from most of that hate and lead me to believe that Clinton is MORE likely to win?

Third, I won't get into specific electoral votes because that involves doing a lot of work to figure things out on a state-by-state basis, which, honestly, I'm not nearly motivated enough to do right now.

Fourth, that's actually an argument FOR my opinion, if anything. I've been trying to dig up as much as I can on the current fractured state of the GOP for a project I'm working on for a particular news company that I won't mention here (no, not Fox News, I just don't think it's the greatest idea to start dropping specifics like that on Teh Interwebz), and one of the strongest commonalities between Republicans of all stripes is that they will do ANYTHING to keep Hillary out of office. Yes, the evangelicals will stay home if Rudy is the nominee - UNLESS he's running against Hillary. Yes, McCain haters will stay home if McCain is the nominee - UNLESS he's running against Hillary. And so on.

You argument makes sense if it's looked at from the perspective of people voting FOR someone. But there's another reason many vote - to vote AGAINST someone. And Hillary generates that urge more than any other candidate in this race.

...and look what happened.



Do we have polls that show that Hillary can even hold the Gore states? Which "purple" or smaller states can she realistically win that Gore didn't?

Florida is forever lost to us thanks to Diebold and Republican chicanery.

Unless the Republicans nominate Huckabee, she loses Arkansas.

Can she carry Virginia? Heck, if Ghouliani or Bloomberg is in the race, can she even carry NEW YORK?



If Clinton is the nominee, NO Republicans stay home. That's the point.

for her but do not admit it in public, because the Media
and others have done everything in their power to sink her.

That made my head hurt as soon as I read it.