Obama can count on winning only the 10 states he won with more than 60% in 2008 — California, Hawaii, New York, Maryland, Delaware, Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Illinois. Add the three Electoral College votes from the District of Columbia, and President Obama has only 146 Electoral College votes to Romney’s 392.
To these 10 “certain” Obama states, add four “blue” states that Obama won in 2008 with 56% to 57% of the vote — Washington, Maine, Oregon and New Jersey — and Obama’s electoral count edges up to only 186, barely half of the 352 Electoral College votes Romney will receive from the other 36 states where Obama received 57% or less of the vote in 2008. But even these four states aren’t guaranteed. All four of them have active and engaged local tea parties, and New Jersey has Chris Christie, the popular governor and big Romney backer.
The only hope Democrats have of narrowing the gap is to win the ground battle. In that effort they have several advantages over the tea party movement. Unions and left-wing organizations will spend millions of dollars to pay people to get out the vote this fall. Meanwhile, the Republican Party’s get-out-the vote efforts will be laughably anemic.
Only the tea party has the enthusiasm and manpower to get out the vote for Mitt Romney, but it’s financed by the spare change found in the couches of local leaders. Nonetheless, as the critical role it played in the 2011 Republican takeover of the Virginia State Senate proved, the tea party is very effective.
The big question is whether wealthy conservative donors will wake up to face the political realities and help local and regional tea party groups finance get-out-the-vote efforts. To date, they have ignored the tea party, giving their donations instead to Washington-based organizations that are more interested in building their own brands than in building effective local get-out-the-vote capabilities.
If local grassroots activists are forced to finance their get-out-the-vote efforts from the spare change in their couches, Obama could pick up six additional states where he won between 54% and 57% of the vote in 2008 — Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, Colorado and New Mexico. This would give Romney a solid, but not spectacular, 296-242 Electoral College victory.
But conservatives around the country should take heart because that’s an unlikely scenario. As we’re beginning to see, conservative donors are finally realizing that the scope of the conservative victory in November will be determined by the level of financial support they provide to local grassroots conservatives. They understand that when it comes to political return on investment, local tea party groups provide the biggest bang for the buck.
