LANSING – In its latest analysis of the 2008 presidential race, Michigan State University’s Institute for Public Policy and Social Research shows an Electoral College tie between Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama – 269 votes each.
A candidate needs 270 Electoral College votes, at a minimum, to win the presidency outright, said IPPSR Director Douglas B. Roberts, Ph.D. The U.S. Constitution gives each state Electoral College one vote for each U.S. Representative, and one for each U.S. Senator. Thus, the smallest states, with only one U.S. House member, has three Electoral College votes.
The largest state, California, has 53 representatives, and 55 Electoral College votes. Michigan has 17 Electoral College votes for its 15 U.S. House members and two U.S. Senators.
Obama has maintained a lead in the Electoral College as tracked daily by IPPSR’s Office for Survey Research for all but two days last week.
“This is the story of the election,” Roberts said. “A possible tie in the Electoral College would throw the election into the U.S. House of Representatives. With one seat vacant and if all Representatives voted the party line, the Democrats now have the edge in the U.S. House. It is possible, under some scenarios, to consider the possibility of a tie there too.”
Senior IPPSR Researcher Nat Ehrlich, who designed the tracking system, called the latest analysis another sign of the extreme up-and-down nature of this year’s presidential election.
“If our data on the most recent state-by-state polling results were election returns, we might be facing a constitutional crisis, brought on by a 269-269 tie between Senators Barack Obama and John McCain,” he said. “As we have been seeing all along, the race is extremely volatile.”
The analysis, is available on IPPSR’s website
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