Barack Hussein Obama v. Willard Mitt Romney
Joe Biden (VP) v. Paul Ryan (VP)
Political Positions of Barack Obama
Political Positions of Mitt Romney
v.
Jill Stein (Green Party)
Gary Johnson (Libertarian Party)
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ELECTORAL MAPS
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The first candidate to reach 270 electoral votes will win election, whether he loses the popular vote or not.
This is the map as it appeared in its final form in 2008. This is considered a "landslide" in political terms. This year is expected to be significantly closer, electorally and numerically.
This is the map as it appears in 2012, blank. There have been some slight modifications across the board to the electoral numbers.
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THE HOT STATES
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These are what conventional wisdom have as 'battleground states' in 2012. Although there is plenty of room to debate over where exactly the line is for something to be called a battleground. Still, for the sake of simplicity, we'll take a broad view:
The people you see in the images are the Secretary of States in each battleground. Red is Republican, Blue is Democrat. In each of the red states, they have made significant strides toward attempting real voting reform, and there has been some controversy about this. That said, many of the attempts were defeated in the court. Although it probably won't effect the outcome, it may still be a good detail to have over the partisan affiliation of each state's Secretary.
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POLLS
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As you can see, National Polls basically have this at a razor's margin. The real dispute comes from state polls. Although after Denver Romney made some real gains, things have turned static once again and have been consistently polling + Obama for the past two weeks. On Friday, November 2, 19 out of 20 battleground state polls had Obama ahead.
So the real question is: will the polls be accurate or not? That will be part of the fun on November 6.
Polling Websites:
Real Clear Politics
Five Thirty Eight
Princeton Election Consortium
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CONGRESSIONAL RACES
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These are the races this year for the Senate. The lighter the blue color, the less safe it is for Democrats. The lighter the red color, the less safe it is for Republicans. If it is yellow, it's basically a toss-up state. There is a link below to a website that tracks the races and tells you who is going up against who, what they stand for, etc.
These are the races for the House of Representatives. As above, the lighter the blue color, the less safe it is for Democrats. The lighter the red color, the less safe it is for Republicans. If it is yellow, it's toss-up. Check the link before for more detailed analysis.
Congressional Race Tracker:
Roll Call
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THE FINAL COUNTDOWN
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All in all, it's going to be fun. This is my last topic for a long time and since I did the Election 2008 topic, I thought I'd do this one. Let's try to be respectful of each other's opinions, because this is obviously a sensitive subject for everyone.
I'll see you guys on the other side Tuesday night.
Special thanks to cartoon_soldier for the title of this topic!
