It's All Up To Missouri

USA Today has a really cool electoral college tracker where you can assign states to Obama and McCain and see where each has to win in order to reach 270 electoral votes and win the general election.

I assigned states based primarily on history voting patterns, which resulted in several Bush states from 2004 swinging back to their historical Democratic-leaning trends.

My result? It all comes down to Missouri.

I gave Obama the following states: Washington, Oregon, California, Hawaii, New Mexico, Nevada, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, and the entire Northeast (from Maryland north, including D.C.). The result is 269 electoral votes.

Everything else I gave to McCain, including Missouri. The result - 269 electoral votes. A dead tie.

(I have no idea what happens in the event of a tie, and don't recall seeing that covered in the Constitution).

In 1992 and 1996, Missouri went for Bill Clinton. In 2000 and 2004, it went for Bush.

Now, I'm going to borrow a oft-cited (but substantively sophmoric) argument used by Clinton - that she has won the states Dems need to win the general election. On my map, the only legitimate battleground state is Missouri - a state that Obama won by a mere 10,000 votes (1% difference). Thus, Obama wins the only state that matters - the only state in contest. Giving Missouri to Obama results in a 280-258 win for Obama. Notably, it also results in the complete political marginalization of the South, which for years has been considered "must-win" territory for either party to win the White House.

Some states, like Michigan (which isn't really included in the primary results), California, Pennsylvania and New York all went for Clinton. But those states are unshakable Democratic locks, and have all gone that way for the past four presidential elections. Obama will win those without breaking a sweat.

Clinton's argument loses more luster when you view my map and realize that I have given McCain Ohio and Florida, both of which were obviously pivotal in the past two elections. Those are two of the big states that Clinton says she can win, and that Dems have to win. 'cept they don't have to win them (at least not on my map).

This year, as goes Missouri, goes the White House. And Missouri goes to Obama.