Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
It's far too early for such a prediction, of course, but electoral-vote.com says that based on the state polls as of August 23rd, it's 269 for Obama and 256 for McCain with Virginia -- and its 13 electoral votes -- a perfect tie. Assuming McCain got Virginia, as the Republicans usually do, that would add up to 269-269 in the electoral college. Which would, of course, mean the House of Representatives gets to choose the president, but not in a conventional manner. The constitution says:
...and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote..
That could make things interesting. The Democrats have a majority in the House, but do they have a majority of the state delegations? Some heavily Democratic states may have nearly 100% of their delegations be Democrats, but each state delegation only gets one vote. So how many state delegations are controlled by the Democrats and how many are controlled by the Republicans?
If this chart is correct, it looks like the Democrats would likely still have it. I count 26 state delegations controlled by Democrats, 22 controlled by the Republicans and 2 states evenly split. That assumes the current splits stand, of course. It would be the new Congress that would vote on the presidency question, not the outgoing Congress. But boy, what a mess that would be. It would make 2000 look like a walk in the park.
Politics
Comments
1. It should be noted that, in the event of the electoral college being unable to muster a majority for one candidate, the House elects the president and the Senate the vice-president. Now suppose that the Democrats lose one delegation in the House in the November election but increase their Senatorial delegation. Under this scenario, the Senate would presumably elect Senator Biden vice-president but the House would be unable to elect Senator Obama president. Then, vice-president Biden would serve as president!
2. However, it could get even worse. Suppose that the Rethuglicans gain 1 Senate seat, giving them 50 and suppose that Senator Lieberman votes with the Democrats to elect Senator Biden. Then the vote in the Senate is 50/50 and guess who gets to decide the election. Remember that Dick Cheney is vice-president until 1/20/09 so he gets to break the tie!
Posted by: SLC | August 25, 2008 9:48 AM
What's interesting to me as an outsider is just how close it appears to be. I mean, there is apparently the strongest Democrat candidate in many a year, and a Republican candidate who thrills virtually nobody, and is a solid supporter of the most detested White House since Nixon's ... and STILL its a toss-up.
Go figure.
Posted by: Dave S. | August 25, 2008 9:51 AM
I'm with Dave S. As another non-American can someone explain how an incumbent party with such an incredibly bad approval rating still manages to get 50% of the national vote.
Posted by: Dave Durant | August 25, 2008 10:09 AM
Because many Americans have bought the Neocon mythology hook line and sinker, and since they only watch Fox News and read Drudge, they never see the information that says otherwise. 31% of them either think Obama is a Muslim, or aren't sure. They think there were WMDs in Iraq, that Bush is responsible for the lack of attacks since 9/11, our economy is in great shape, ditto for our health care system, that we can increase revenues while lowering taxes, and that Ann Coulter is a serious scholar. Go read townhall and you will get a feel for what is going on. It's the largest cult in American history.
Posted by: Science Avenger | August 25, 2008 10:20 AM
Daves - Look at the approval rating of Congress, led by Democrats. The last I looked, it was even worse than W's.
Posted by: JED | August 25, 2008 10:26 AM
Dave S and Dave Durant:
You should talk to a typical Republican voter. They will say something like, "Yeah, McCain will do something stupid like invade Iran, he'll cut taxes for the rich, and my family will be left holding the bag. But, man, that Obama is such an elitist!"
No kidding. An American can agree with you line-by-line on every policy issue, but often he or she will end up voting by sheer gut feeling.
Posted by: Chiroptera | August 25, 2008 10:32 AM
As another non-American can someone explain how an incumbent party with such an incredibly bad approval rating still manages to get 50% of the national vote.
1. Incumbent parties tend to poll well in general.
2. McCain and co. have been hammering Obama with an onslaught of negative ads. Those always work because...
3. People are stupid.
4. People still think McCain is independently-minded, mostly because he says so. The "noun-verb-POW" bit isn't hurting him either.
Posted by: schism | August 25, 2008 10:35 AM
My $0.02...
(1) Two sizable minorities of the population would vote for a potted plant if it had (D) or (R) beside its name.
(2) McCain may not inspire his socially conservative base, but he does give the right answers on big issues like abortion and same-sex marriages/civil unions.
(3) Conservatives know the next president will likely have an enormous impact on the makeup of the Supreme Court. They can draw up a list for a McCain administration or at the very least veto nominees.
(4) The Republican message network is generally better at framing and pounding on an issue than the Democratic equivalent.
(5) McCain runs on his Maverick image to get around Bush's unpopularity.
(6) Racism is still an issue. Many people will vote for Obama just because he is black (or mixed-race or whatever), but even more will not vote for Obama for the same reason.
(7) Obama is still running a primary campaign to gain Clinton supporters.
(8) Obama also does not have as much liberal support in some quarters with his centrist turn and reversal on FISA.
Posted by: jmc | August 25, 2008 10:37 AM
Dave and Dave: Think about how long the Conservative party in Britain held onto power, before, during and after Thatcher, despite being totally despised by all of Britain's culture-makers. Just because the Republican party doesn't, at all, represent the best interests of blue-collar U.S. citizens, that doesn't mean they'll vote Democrat, anymore than, say Canadian voters (seriously, a militant nationalist as pm who issues threats on arctic ownership? Really? That's monumentally laughable.), or British voters, who are getting ready to return the Tories, party of institutional racism and aristocracy, to power (in the 21st century, no less).
Conservative parties have a way of appealing to the majority of any society by making political races a question of "values". Just as the Thatcherites won election after election with the message "all Labour candidates are godless communist bastards who think they're smarter than you", or Berlusconi wins in Italy, Chirac won in France, or Schroder(sp) won in Germany by playing to arrogant, baseless nationalism, despite them all being horrible, blatantly criminal leaders, so too do the Republicans win in the U.S. Really, this isn't an American-only phenomenon; you'd see it all around you if you bothered to look.
Beyond that, you shouldn't underestimate the selfishness or perfidity of the media when it comes to elections. There was a time when news organizations had a sense of social responsibility in this country; when newsmen allied themselves with the people, more or less, even though they worked for the wealthiest men on the planet. Their owners allowed them to do that because it helped sell copy. In a similar way, it benefits news channels and papers to cast elections as close, because by doing that they get more viewers, and more viewers mean better ratings, and better ratings mean more ad revenue. They simply don't care if they have to portray an inaccurate picture to do this or if by doing it they create a bandwagon effect for one candidate over another; what matters are the ratings they garner. That's why the media is so pro-McCain right now; he's the underdog, and by propping up the little guy you make the race seem like a dead heat.
If you want an accurate depiction of how this race will play out, you shouldn't be listening to the MSNBC or the polls that the ABC orders. You should be reading mags like the National Journal or Roll Call or one of the other periodicals that get politicians to be honest by allowing them to comment anonymously. And if you read those, you'll quite quickly figure out one thing that everyone is agreeing on right now; The Republicans are going to be annihilated.
Posted by: Julian | August 25, 2008 10:45 AM
http://www.scrippsnews.com/node/35601
WASHINGTON -- The 110th Congress is close to becoming the most deadly term for lawmakers in the past 20 years. The death of Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, D-Ohio, who died Wednesday of a brain aneurysm, brings to eight the number of legislators who have died since the current Congress began in January 2007. ....
Keep watching those numbers.
Posted by: me | August 25, 2008 10:45 AM
With regards people dying while in political office in the US, can anyone explain why there is not simply another election to decide who replaces them ?
Posted by: John Doe | August 25, 2008 11:40 AM
Getting back to the issue in the post, there was a panel discussion on presidential elections on CSPAN last night which included former VP Walter Mondale and two of the guys who form the "non-partisan" debate commission (one Dem, one Rep). They touched on the Electoral College system and were asked if they would support its abolition.
They all said no, even though they agreed that they would never advise a new democracy to adopt a similar system. The only real defense any of they had for keeping it was that voters in smaller states would be disenfranchised if we went to a one person, one vote system because politicians would ignore them to focus on the most populous states.
Then about five minute later, they began to talk about the same few "battleground states" where candidates spend all their time and money every election, utterly missing the fact that this demolishes their argument in defense of the Electoral College.
Under the Electoral College, if I am in the minority living in a heavily partisan state like Texas or New York, my vote isn't worth anything. If I don't live in a battleground state, I will be ignored, and if I live in a populous state like California or New York then my vote intrinsically counts for less than if I lived in a small, mid-western state.
In a one person, one vote system, all votes are worth exactly the same, no matter where you live. What's not to like about that?
(Perhaps the only downside to reforming the system to a direct election would be if the vote was extremely close. A nationwide recount would be problematic. But even then, the Electoral College didn't protect us from that messy outcome in 2000 either.)
I was very disappointed no one challenged the panel's weak defense of the current system. It amounted to saying that it's fairer to smaller states (even though it's not really) and that, anyway, it's too hard to change it at this point, and we don't know if changing it might make things worse (ooh, scary).
Posted by: tacitus | August 25, 2008 12:01 PM
Because elections are expensive and time-consuming. Depending on when it happens it may take long enough to sort who each party will put forward, work out a schedule, etc, that the next general election is already back around. It takes time to dig up dirt on your opponent and to prepare the associated negative ads.
In most cases it's easier simply to appoint a replacement on a temporary basis.
Posted by: chris | August 25, 2008 12:20 PM
Vacancies in the House are not filled by appointment; the Constitution requires a special election, though the logistics are left to the state.
Posted by: eric | August 25, 2008 1:06 PM
For what it's worth, fivethirtyeight.com, which has a pretty scientific statistical-simulation based method of doing forecasts, keeps track of its predicted chance of a tie (1.17% at the moment). It looks now like if there's a tie, Obama wins, but you could imagine weird stuff happening (for example, pressure to follow the winner of the popular vote). Yes, the electoral college is idiotic, but the real reason those in power don't oppose it is because they know an amendment to change it could never pass. The state-by-state solution (nationalpopularvote.com) is much more feasible.
Posted by: thoughtcounts A | August 25, 2008 1:11 PM
In most states, Senate vacancies are filled by the governor of the state until the next election. Thus, if Obama is elected, the governors of Delaware and Illinois will appoint replacements. Similarly, if McCain is elected, the governor of Arizona will appoint a replacement. At this point in time, it seems unlikely that McCain will have a fellow senator as his running mate.
Posted by: SLC | August 25, 2008 1:14 PM
To all foreigners: It's not as close as it looks. Voters don't pay attention until the conventions, August is a dead news month, and I suspect most pollsters are still trying to work out decent likely voter screens given increased registration on the D side and likely (but hard to measure) demoralization on the R side.
Not to mention no one knows how effective Obama's voter mobilization and registration is going to be -- no Democratic has tried something like this in ages, although the GOP is pretty handy at it.
I don't expect any sort of blowouts, but I suspect the final result won't be much of a nailbiter.
Posted by: Morat20 | August 25, 2008 2:48 PM
Can anyone explain this to me:
As the House is selecting the new president, the Senate is busy selecting the new vice-president. In the Senate, each of the 100 Senators gets one vote, with a simple majority -- 51 -- Senators required to select the vice-president. Unlike it does on the House, the 12th Amendment places no time limit on the Senate's selection of a vice president.
If the election is a tie the Senate gets to pick the next Vice President??
Posted by: pensy | August 25, 2008 5:49 PM
pensy, the 12th Amendment may not put a time limit, but the 20th Amendment does.
Posted by: Screechy Monkey | August 25, 2008 6:53 PM
Actually, I guess the 20th doesn't technically put a time limit on when the Senate must choose a Vice-President. But it does (along with the Presidential Succession Act) provide for what happens to the presidency if neither a president nor a vice-president has been selected.
Posted by: Screechy Monkey | August 25, 2008 7:01 PM
The problem is, most Americans buy into the prosperity myth. They have been convinced by the Republicans that if they just work hard, go to church, etc., they too will become wealthy. They ignore any attempt to point out that, for the most part, the same wealthy families have dominated things for the last century; for every Bill Gates, there are millions who work just as hard and die in debt, and they buy into the rather bogus arguments against universal health care, etc., because they want to believe that they too can benefit from all our country has to offer.
Also, just a heads up, but Congress invariably has a far lower approval rating than the President, it isn't a condemnation of the Democrats, it is simply the product of people hating Congress, but reelecting the same folks over and over again because "their Congressman is a good guy!"
Posted by: dogmeatib | August 25, 2008 7:29 PM
If it helps any for the non-Americans, while the polls may look close or far the electoral college vote won't always reflect it perfectly. That's because unlike in Europe (or any other democracy I can think of) we have a winner-take all system for electoral college votes.
So if I get 40% of the vote in any state, and the two other guys get, say, 30% each, I get ALL the electoral votes. The only two exceptions to this are Maine and Nebraska, which usually have too few electoral votes to make a difference.
That's why there's so much discussion about what states a candidate carries here, and why small state voters have votes that get weighed more, proportionally, than those of more populous states.
Posted by: Jesse | August 25, 2008 9:20 PM
Also, --
Somebody already mentioned fivethirtyeight.com, which has a graph showing how many electoral votes you can get against a popular vote total. In theory I could lose the popular vote by as much as 4% and still win.
Only once in our history has the election been thrown to the house of Representatives, and that was the election of Hayes in 1876. There was one electoral vote that was disputed and a commission ended up deciding the election; Tilden was unambiguously the popular favorite, though.
Those from parliamentary systems will then ask why electors all vote for the same guy who gets only 50% + 1 vote, and the answer is that the system is set at the state level. Any state can decide to split its votes, but they don't because they are afraid of becoming less relevant to campaigns. Colorado had a measure on the ballot to split its vote in 2004, and it failed because odds are the 9 votes it gets would be split 4-5 either way and therefore be relatively unimportant to a candidate, because it would be relatively unlikely to make enough difference.
I don't mean to be redundant but I thought this might clear it up for people from more rational systems :-)
Posted by: Jesse | August 25, 2008 9:28 PM
Not me-- I'd vote for the potted plant no matter what letter it had beside its name!
Posted by: Gretchen | August 25, 2008 10:57 PM
Posted by: Onkel Bob | August 26, 2008 2:06 AM
@Onkel Bob--
Thanks for that one, and I forgot to mention that in the case of a tie, since each state gets one vote, small states again get weighed more heavily.
The interesting thing about a tie, is that a Democratic Congressional delegation would be under some pressure to vote as the population voted. But the party might ask them to vote Obama. Of course the reverse could happen as well. Think of many southern states where people tend to split tickets or a state like Maine which also has a tendency to do that.
Posted by: Jesse | August 26, 2008 6:47 AM
"The problem is, most Americans buy into the prosperity myth. They have been convinced by the Republicans that if they just work hard, go to church, etc., they too will become wealthy."
Well they WOULD if the government didn't take their hard-earned money and give it to those no-good minorities.
It's always great to see a right-winger frothing at the mouth about all the money Al Gore (and those fraudulent "climate scientists") are making.
See THEY DESERVE to be rich because they subscribe to the sacred writ of tax cuts and American exceptionalism, dirty traitors like Gore (and that no-good Jew Banker Soros) are obviously cheating the system soemhow.
Posted by: Ian Gould | August 26, 2008 7:22 AM
tacitus-
I don't think there would be too much of a problem with nationwide recounts since there's no reason you couldn't tally votes up state by state and district by district, as that is what they do in many other countries, some with 100 million + populations.
My cousin, a history teacher, said something interesting: our Constitution is such a success that no other country has used it as a model for how to organize a government.
The other thing to remember is a winner-take-all system has to automatically devolve to two parties. There's no other mathematically stable outcome.
Proportional representation would solve this, though we'd have to revamp the system a bit for governing via the President. For example, separating the president and VP again combined with porportional representation would force anyone to build coalitions in order to get elected.
Also, in most countries with a parliament the executive hasn't got a whole lot of power and they differentiate between the head of state and head of government. The Queen of England is the head of state while Gordon Brown is head of the government. In the US we don't make this distinction at all.
The funny part is how Americans react when someone speaks of the president of such a country -- we all assume (as Americans) that he's the go-to guy, when in reality he is just a figurehead most of the time. (For example, Ahmedinejad of Iran has zero, nada, zilch to say about what the Iranian military does. He also has no foreign policy portfolio whatsoever, yet when he talks we go all nuts as though he mattered. The go-to guy is the premier, Khamenei, who most Americans have no idea exists and is much more moderate in his speeches and policies).
Posted by: Jesse | August 26, 2008 8:05 AM
If there's a tie I think they should settle it mano a mano. McCain's people would of course want a contest to see who can land an F-18 on the deck of an aircraft carrier at night, with the aircraft's avionics disabled, in a typhoon, while being tortured--this would be the way to go, since that's sort of what a McCain presiduncey would look like.
Posted by: democommie | August 26, 2008 8:07 AM
"Also, in most countries with a parliament the executive hasn't got a whole lot of power and they differentiate between the head of state and head of government. The Queen of England is the head of state while Gordon Brown is head of the government. In the US we don't make this distinction at all."
Unfortunately in the Westminster system, the executive (as represented by the Prime Minsiter as head of government) has MORE power than in the US system.
Because of the absence or weakness of formal checks on executive power and of a formal division of power, an Australian or British Prime Minister with a workable Parliamentary majority comes close to being an elected dictator.
It's a fundamental weakness in our system which is addressed better in systems like the US or most of continental Europe where the powers of the President are more explicitly defined and cicumscribed.
Posted by: Ian Gould | August 26, 2008 8:34 AM
JMC said:
> (2) McCain may not inspire his socially conservative base,
> but he does give the right answers on big issues like
> abortion and same-sex marriages/civil unions.
Which is the big point. Here in the UK you could quite happily swap the names of the two main parties (Conservative and New Labour) and not notice any significant difference as their policies are so similar. Still, people wonder why voter turn-out is so low...
Posted by: David Durant | August 26, 2008 9:46 AM
Why would it be a mess to follow the very precise and exacting rules that are laid out on what to do in a specific situation? I mean, sure the media would pretend it was a mess, but that doesn't make it one. A tie in electoral college votes means the house decides on a one vote/state basis. That's pretty damn simple. 2000 was much, much worse than that
Posted by: AmW | August 26, 2008 10:17 AM
Why would it be a mess to follow the very precise and exacting rules that are laid out on what to do in a specific situation? I mean, sure the media would pretend it was a mess, but that doesn't make it one. A tie in electoral college votes means the house decides on a one vote/state basis. That's pretty damn simple. 2000 was much, much worse than that, since they had to figure out what the proper procedure was (and horribly, horribly failed). It's not like they'd have to send it to the court system to decide on the proper tie-breaking system.
The mess, of course, would be in all the recounts that would doubtlessly be demanded. The utter lack of paper trail on the voting machines might be a bit of an issue...
Posted by: AmW | August 26, 2008 10:26 AM
"A tie in electoral college votes means the house decides on a one vote/state basis. That's pretty damn simple. 2000 was much, much worse than that"
Unless the states split 25 - 25, and the Senate chooses one of the two VP candidates as the Vice President elect, who then becomes the president. However, if the Senate splits 50 - 50, then no one is selected as president and Congress then decides who will be acting president, or how the next acting president will be selected. I assume that new elections will need to be held to select a *real* vs *acting* president, but there do not seem to be any guidelines as to when those elections need to take place.
In summary, if the House splits 25-25, neither McCain nor Obama will be president. The Senate will then choose one of the VP candidates to be President, or if they deadlock, the results of the election are void and congress selects the next acting President however the majority wishes, until new elections occur.
Yeah, real damn simple.
From Wikipedia's article on the 20th amendment:
"Section 3. If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the President, the President elect shall have died, the Vice President elect shall become President. If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified; and the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President elect nor a Vice President elect shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice President shall have qualified."
Please let me know if I am reading this wrong.
Posted by: Shenda | August 27, 2008 2:18 PM