Politico: 4 Possible freak election outcomes

[CountDeMoney]

I for one am prepared to welcome our new Mormon overlords, and am prepared to retro-baptize my dead Catholic and Lutheran grandparents.

4 possible freak election outcomes
By: Alexander Burns and Emily Schultheis
October 29, 2012 04:31 AM EDT

Could the 2012 campaign end in a tie? Is it possible for Mitt Romney to end up as president — with Joe Biden as his vice president? Could the presidential election end up decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, again?

The short answer is: probably not. To call those outcomes improbable would be a huge understatement. The strong likelihood is that one candidate will win both the Electoral College and the popular vote on Nov. 6 and bring our long 2012 slog to an end.

But hey, it's the end of October in a presidential election year — a hurricane is improbably threatening the Eastern seaboard — so it's the time when a politico's mind turns to the wild and crazy outcomes that could upend all expectations. And public polls still show a close enough race between Romney and Barack Obama that speculation is inevitable.

Here's POLITICO's guide to the freak outcomes that could send us reeling on election night:

A popular vote-Electoral College split

Of all the quirky results, this one is probably the most plausible. There's a pretty straightforward set of events that leads to the popular vote and the Electoral College breaking in different directions — almost certainly to the benefit of President Barack Obama.

According to the best guesswork of strategists and pollsters on both sides, the scenario unfolds like this: Romney runs up huge vote margins in the South, Obama wins big blue states like New York and California by reduced margins, the swing states all end up very close, but Obama holds on to Ohio, Wisconsin and Nevada and blocks Romney from winning 270 electoral votes. In that scenario, Romney could take the popular vote by running up the score in heavily Republican states, while Obama amasses the electoral votes he needs for victory by eking out swing-state wins.

For Democrats, there might be a certain karmic justice in that result — payback for the 2000 election that saw Al Gore go down to defeat in the Electoral College despite winning the popular vote.

Public Policy Polling's Tom Jensen laid out the math like so: "Romney wins the popular vote with an 8-point swing from 2008. But an 8-point swing from 2008 would still leave Obama as the winner in key swing states like Colorado, Wisconsin, Nevada, New Hampshire and Iowa."

What's more, Jensen said, Obama's 2008 margins are down disproportionately in "heavily blue states like Connecticut, Washington, and Illinois and dropping 10 [to] 12 points from 2008 in places like those makes it more likely that he loses the popular vote but obviously it has no Electoral College impact."

The opposite outcome — Romney winning the Electoral College, but not the popular vote — is harder to imagine. Given what a steep hill Romney has to climb on the electoral map, there's little chance he could win a state like Ohio without taking the popular vote too.

"There's no chance that it's going to be the other way, that Romney wins electoral and Obama wins the popular vote," said pollster Steve Lombardo, who worked for Romney in 2008. "I think the greatest likelihood is that Obama wins both [the popular and electoral vote], but there's a chance that Romney wins the popular and could lose the electoral."

The real nightmare scenario, strategists said ,would be a popular vote-electoral vote split where the outcome in a major state like Ohio is in doubt — essentially a repeat of the 2000 campaign, just as end-of-year negotiations over the so-called fiscal cliff are supposed to be getting underway.

That outcome is both too unlikely and too gruesome to contemplate.

A 269-269 Electoral College tie

It has never happened in American history and probably (read: very, very probably) won't happen this year. But if you go state by state on the 2012 map, there is at least some tiny chance that the two candidates end up with the same number of Electoral College votes.

Perhaps the likeliest of the unlikely 269-269 maps is this: Obama loses most of the swing states up for grabs (Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, North Carolina and Virginia) but holds onto New Hampshire, Ohio and Wisconsin.

It's not a proposition you'd want to bet on, but the race is at least close enough that some Republicans are trying to peel off a single extra electoral vote from the state of Maine. The pro-Romney super PAC Restore Our Future is spending six figures' worth of TV ads in the state, which apportions its electoral votes by congressional district, and could potentially break a 269-269 deadlock.

"You would have to have a lot of different states that are extremely close now falling a certain way," said Republican pollster Whit Ayres.

Ayres outlined another map that produces a tie: Obama wins Colorado, Iowa, New Hampshire and Virginia, but loses Ohio and the rest.

"None of [that] is wildly outside the realm of possibility," Ayres said. "It is more likely this year because of the incredible closeness of the race, at least since the first presidential debate."

Democratic strategist Tad Devine said he believes Obama is "picking up steam" and reducing the chance of a knife's-edge outcome in the Electoral College.

But, he said, "I think 269-269 could happen. That's not a remote possibility, it's a real possibility. I would not be shocked, for one, if it happened."

In the event of a tie, the fate of the election rests in the hands of the newly-elected U.S. House of Representatives (not the outgoing Congress), where each House delegation from each state would cast a single vote for one of the two presidential candidates.

Republicans could be expected to have the edge in that situation, though presumably the winner of the national popular vote would have a strong argument to make for his election. Then the Senate would choose a vice president, and not necessarily one of the same party as the president. Romney-Biden, anyone?

2012 becomes a blowout election

Every public poll shows the presidential campaign close — maybe extremely close — nationally and in the swing states. Private polling on both sides confirms this thing will go down to the wire.

Unless it doesn't.

Republicans have long hoped that the 2012 race would break open at the end: once Romney proves he's a suitable alternative to the president, they have argued, the race will tip decisively away from the incumbent. Romneyworld isn't expecting that outcome, but at least some on the GOP side still think it's within the realm of possibility.

Republican pollster Ed Goeas — one of the pollsters behind the POLITICO/George Washington University Battleground Poll — said it might take an outside event to run up the score for Romney. He pointed specifically to the October unemployment report coming next Friday, days before Nov. 6.

"If those unemployment numbers go back to 8 percent, I guarantee you Romney's going to win this thing by 4 or 5 points. That will be the equivalent of the Bush DUI story coming out before the election on steroids," Goeas said, referring to the damaging 11th-hour disclosure in 2000 that then-Gov. Bush had once been arrested for driving while intoxicated.

If winning the Electoral College while losing the popular vote is something that could probably only happen to Obama, a surprise landslide may be a Romney-only contingency. After all, as Republicans and Democrats alike have found this cycle, it's awfully difficult to change voters' perceptions of a sitting president.

"Barring some catastrophically negative turn of events for Romney, people have made up their minds about President Obama. It's Romney that they're trying to figure out. There could be something that happens in the final 13 days that causes the Romney trend or surge to accelerate," Lombardo said.

Should Obama happen to win by a far wider-than-expected margin, that's probably less about surprise events than it is about turnout. If the electorate that shows up on Nov. 6 mirrors the population that voted in 2008, Romney might have a hard time getting close to the president.

A split decision in the Senate

OK, so the presidential vote will probably unfold without incident — but even if it does, there's still the potential for chaos down-ballot. The campaign for control of the U.S. Senate has grown more unsettled with the approach of Election Day, with elections that once seemed destined to break for one side or the other getting even more competitive.

The likeliest outcome, as of right now, is that Democrats retain control of the chamber. But given the preponderance of toss-up races, there's always the chance of a 50-50 tie in the upper chamber.

It wouldn't take much for that to happen. Republicans currently hold 47 seats, but are expected to lose seats in Massachusetts and Maine. If they were to pick up Democratic-held seats in Nebraska, North Dakota, Montana, Wisconsin and Virginia — or win a slightly tougher race in Ohio or Connecticut — that would create a 50-50 balance of power.

Increasingly confident Democrats don't think much of this scenario. Even if Republicans did capture all those seats (and Democrats don't think they will) they'd also have to stave off Democratic victories in Republican-held Indiana, Arizona and Nevada to produce a tie. Indiana Republican Richard Mourdock's comments this week about abortion and rape made a Senate tie — let alone a Republican takeover — rather less likely.

"There are five or six places where I don't think anyone knows what's going to happen. There's a real possibility that there's going to be real indecision when it comes to control of the Senate," Devine said.

Democratic pollster John Anzalone argued that the trend line is clearly in his party's favor — and that on the off-chance of a 50-50 Senate, they might be able to count on a Democratic vice president to break the tie anyway.

"Romney is still having to run the table to win the Electoral College," Anzalone said. "So even if it were tied, I still think Joe Biden would be there to break the tie."

[jimmy olsen]

Romney-Biden administration would be by far the most humorous situation.

[Strix]

It's over! Obama has had it wrapped up for quite some time now. It's just portrayed as close so that everyone can get their hands on campaign money.

Prince Andrew in 2016!!!! 

[Phillip V]

A big surprise is one that nobody is talking about it. I cannot find any major newspaper that warns of a possible Bradley effect this election.

It's not too unlikely. We already had our first demonstration after the first debate. Obama's support among various groups such as Latinos remains strong. It was the white support that plummeted, especially white men. The question is whether the bottom has been reached, or if there are more whites (and others) that will abandon the President at the ballot box.

[Barrister]

I'm going to predict that there is no surprise outcome and that Obama is re-elected with a comfortable (though hardly huge) margin of victory in both popular votes and electoral college votes.

[derspiess]

A big surprise is one that nobody is talking about it. I cannot find any major newspaper that warns of a possible Bradley effect this election.

It's not too unlikely. We already had our first demonstration after the first debate. Obama's support among various groups such as Latinos remains strong. It was the white support that plummeted, especially white men. The question is whether the bottom has been reached, or if there are more whites (and others) that will abandon the President at the ballot box.

As I mentioned in the other thread, it didn't happen in 2008.  So that be why nobody is talking about it now. 

I would say it would be nice for that to happen this go-around, but I'll get people skewing my words and attacking me for being RACISS just like they did in '08

[derspiess]

I'm going to predict that there is no surprise outcome and that Obama is re-elected with a comfortable (though hardly huge) margin of victory in both popular votes and electoral college votes.

So same thing as in 2008, then?  Do you really think enthusiasm for Obama is the same as it was 4 years ago?

[merithyn]

I'm going to predict that there is no surprise outcome and that Obama is re-elected with a comfortable (though hardly huge) margin of victory in both popular votes and electoral college votes.

From your lips to the gods of elections' ears. 

[garbon]

I would say it would be nice for that to happen this go-around, but I'll get people skewing my words and attacking me for being RACISS just like they did in '08

Well not sure that a person should be happy that people are either secretly racist and/or feel that they have to say they'd vote for a black guy so as not to appear racist.

[garbon]

I'm going to predict that there is no surprise outcome and that Obama is re-elected with a comfortable (though hardly huge) margin of victory in both popular votes and electoral college votes.

From your lips to the gods of elections' ears. 

I hope not. I'm tired of our smug do-nothing President.

[Phillip V]

A big surprise is one that nobody is talking about it. I cannot find any major newspaper that warns of a possible Bradley effect this election.

It's not too unlikely. We already had our first demonstration after the first debate. Obama's support among various groups such as Latinos remains strong. It was the white support that plummeted, especially white men. The question is whether the bottom has been reached, or if there are more whites (and others) that will abandon the President at the ballot box.

As I mentioned in the other thread, it didn't happen in 2008.  So that be why nobody is talking about it now. 

I would say it would be nice for that to happen this go-around, but I'll get people skewing my words and attacking me for being RACISS just like they did in '08

The nature and context has changed. White voters were willing to take a chance on the wildly popular and cool (but also non-threatening) Obama. Now, they subconsciously want to snatch away at the last minute what they gave to the black man. And do so guiltily with resignation (perhaps in their minds).

[Barrister]

I'm going to predict that there is no surprise outcome and that Obama is re-elected with a comfortable (though hardly huge) margin of victory in both popular votes and electoral college votes.

So same thing as in 2008, then?  Do you really think enthusiasm for Obama is the same as it was 4 years ago?

Clearly not.

But he's also not an unknown any more.  He's the incumbent.  He doesn't need a wave of "Hope and Change" to get him elected.

[Barrister]

I'm going to predict that there is no surprise outcome and that Obama is re-elected with a comfortable (though hardly huge) margin of victory in both popular votes and electoral college votes.

From your lips to the gods of elections' ears. 

Well I hope not.  I'm on record for fake-voting for Romney.

[merithyn]

I'm going to predict that there is no surprise outcome and that Obama is re-elected with a comfortable (though hardly huge) margin of victory in both popular votes and electoral college votes.

From your lips to the gods of elections' ears. 

I hope not. I'm tired of our smug do-nothing President.

I don't trust Romney's plan. I've read it over and over again on his website, but it still doesn't make any sense, financially.

On top of that, I don't want Obamacare repealed. Period. Having gone two years without insurance, having made bad choices for my health because I just couldn't afford to do what I knew needed to be done, I just don't want to go back there. In fact, I don't think that Obamacare goes far enough, so the idea of Romney taking away what few gains toward a better healthcare program that we've made just kind of makes me a bit irritated.

[derspiess]

Well not sure that a person should be happy that people are either secretly racist and/or feel that they have to say they'd vote for a black guy so as not to appear racist.

And here we go

Did I say I hoped people are secretly racist?  All I'm saying is it would be nice if turns out the polling numbers for Obama were inflated and Romney ends up winning.