Yesterday, Mitt Romney gave reporters this oft-repeated pearl of conventional wisdom: "Can't win the White House without winning Ohio", he told them. Is this true?
Here's a comparison: the NFC team almost always wins the pre-Super Bowl coin toss. Since 1994, the AFC team has only won twice; in fact, between 1998 and 2006 the NFC went totally undefeated in this event (odds 1 : 512).
AFC | NFC | |
2006 | lost | won |
2005 | lost | won |
2004 | lost | won |
2003 | lost | won |
2002 | lost | won |
2001 | lost | won |
2000 | lost | won |
1999 | lost | won |
1998 | lost | won |
Does the above table tell us that only NFC teams can win coin tosses? Of course not. That's ridiculous, but no more so than a lot of other things...
2008 | 365_173 | FL | OH |
2004 | 286_251 | FL | OH |
2000 | 271_266 | FL | OH |
1996 | 379_159 | FL | OH |
Above: results of past four presidential elections by electoral votes. In all cases, winner took FL and OH.
1992 | 395_143 | FL | OH |
Move the baseline back one cycle and the premise that FL is necessary to win the presidency is proven false. The fact that the winner of every election since 1964 has taken OH merely demonstrates correlation (think 12 consecutive coin tosses coming up heads) augmented by the fact that since the winner generally takes the most states, one of them is likely to end up being OH. To test the statement's veracity one must address how often, if ever, the victor would have won without FL and/or OH:
+ FL, OH | - FL | - OH | - FL, OH | |
2008 | 365_173 | 338_200 | 345_193 | 318_220 |
2004 | 286_251 | 259_278 | 266_271 | 239_298 |
2000 | 271_266 | 246_291 | 250_287 | 225_312 |
1996 | 379_159 | 354_184 | 358_180 | 333_205 |
1992 | 395_143 | 370_168 | 374_164 | 349_189 |
Above: results of past five presidential elections by electoral votes (in bold letters) including hypothetical scenarios in which FL and/or OH are given to the losing candidate.
Were we to extend the table back to 1920, we would find that with the single exception of George W. Bush, giving FL and OH to the other candidate would fail to alter the outcome of the election. So what is the origin of this peculiar and totally false belief held by Romney and so many others? Most likely the lens of recent history: it seems this piece of lore made its way into the collective largely due to the resemblance of Kerry's narrow defeat in 2004 to Gore's in 2000, at the hands of FL and OH, respectively.
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Update (10/29): "We can't win without Florida"