Will He Win?

As we look ahead to this election year, one of the first questions that arises is will the president win re-election?  More importantly, do his accomplishments demonstrate that he deserves to win re-election? On this latter question, I say yes and this list (along with some other things I will be talking about over the next year) is why he has been a good president and should be elected to a second term.

I'll be talking about some of those 159 achievements over the course of the year and why they are significant but let's take a look at that first question: will he win? At this point, I really don't know.

I'd like to be optimistic and say that he will win considering the clown show that is currently going on with the GOP primaries. But I'm not sure I have that much faith in American's ability to overcome their fear and apathy, the two things that are currently working against the president. Of course, it certainly depends on the GOP nominee. For me, this simply comes down to Romney and not Romney.

First, let's take a look at the 2012 Electoral Map The interactive function allows you to click on the states and assign the votes to either party. Now imagine that any candidate besides Romney is the nominee. By my calculations, Obama wins 232 and Not Romney wins 184, leaving Nevada, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Iowa, Wisconsin,  Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida as tossups. Likely a few of these will go Obama but I'm being conservative here. In looking at these numbers, all the president needs is 38 votes and he has it. This could come from winning the western states, Iowa and Wisconsin. Or the last two and Virginia and North Carolina while losing all the western states as well as Florida and Ohio. Obviously, he will not lose this many states so if it is Not Romney, the president wins handily.

But if the nominee is Romney, the map gets tougher for the president. Now, he has 196 and Romney has 195 with the Mittster taking Arizona out of tossup and winning it as well as putting Pennsylvania and Michigan into the tossup column. So, we're looking at 11 states that are going to be tighter than a frog's ass and where, I believe, the election is going to be won or lost. At this point in time, either candidate could win any of these states. Of course, I'm not taking into consideration conservative distrust/apathy towards Mitt Romney which will likely affect voter turnout in some of these states. But I am confident that the completely irrational hatred that people have towards the president will drive them to the polls.

Reset the map and tell me what you think. How will this all play out?