Dan Balz of the Washington Post actually does try to report political news with balance, and often succeeds. Today’ column looks at a variety of scenarios in the presidential elections of the next several cycles.
What is interesting is that he believes there are several scenarios in which the Democrats win the popular vote - as they did in 2016 - while losing the electoral college and thus the presidency. What is going on is the Dems running up supermajorities in a few big city jurisdictions.
All a party technically needs to do to win the electoral votes of a state is win 50% plus one vote in that state. Practically speaking, winning say 52% is excellent. Winning 70% runs up the popular vote total but results in no additional electoral college votes.
Democrats tend to be highly concentrated in a few places, Republicans are less-densely concentrated in many more places. Advantage: GOP.
The demographic group seemingly most up for grabs is white college-educated voters. They’ve tended to vote Dem to some degree but may be trending more GOP as the parties sort themselves out by race. They’re a group to watch going forward.
