President Obama starts with edge on inaugural Fix Electoral College map

From The Washington Post's blog, The Fix: President Obama starts with edge on inaugural Fix Electoral College map
President Obama carries a significant, but far from determinative, edge over former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney in the race for 270 electoral votes this fall, according to the first detailed analysis of the map conducted by the Fix.

Obama starts the general election with 15 states (plus the District of Columbia) and 196 electoral votes solidly for him while Romney begins with 21 states and 170 electoral votes solidly in his corner. (One of the states solidly for Romney is Indiana, where Obama won in 2008 but no one expects a repeat performance in 2012.)

Another three states — Pennsylvania (20 electoral votes), Michigan (16) and New Mexico (5) — lean toward Obama while Arizona (11) and Missouri (10) lean toward Romney.

Add up the states solidly for Obama and those leaning his way and you get 237 electoral votes. Add up the states solidly for Romney and those leaning his way and you get 191 electoral votes.

While Obama is closer to the prize than Romney, victory will likely come for either man from the nine swing states — Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Wisconsin and Virginia — that are considered genuine toss-ups in our first electoral college predictions.

Those nine states comprise 110 electoral votes; whichever candidate wins a majority of them will almost certainly win the presidency.

As with the overall map, Obama starts with an edge — if 2008 is any guide — in the Fix swing states. He carried every single one of them in 2008 and, even more striking, his average margin of victory across those nine states was 7.6 percent.

In order to increase his own margin for error in those nine swing states, Romney would need to put a major electoral vote treasure — Pennsylvania is the most obvious — more in play than it appears now. Win Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes, and all of a sudden Romney’s relatively narrow path opens up somewhat.

Still, in our baseline analysis of the 2012 electoral map, you’d rather be Obama than Romney.

Of course, the election isn’t for another 173 days. And things can — and will — change. That’s why every week, we’ll be updating our electoral map as states get more (and less competitive) thanks to ad buys, polls and candidate attention. So, if your favorite state isn’t where you think it should be, maybe it will be next week.