Hedging PA's Presidential Bet

Recent polls have shifted Pennsylvania into the competitive column for whoever winds up being the 2012 GOP nominee. I have my doubts. This is, after all, the state that went for Al Gore in 2000 with 50.6 percent (46.4% for Bush) while at the same time reelecting Rick Santorum to the US Senate with 52.4 percent. 2004 was closer, with John Kerry only winning with 50.4 percent over Bush's 48.4 - a two-point margin narrowing. 2004 also featured a flip-flop Senate election (appropriate since Kerry was the Dem's POTUS candidate) where then-Republican Arlen Specter was returned with 52.6 percent of the vote.

John McCain was supposed to be a stronger candidate than Bush here - and was supposedly competitive down to the wire - because he's a "moderate"... and got absolutely demolished by Barack Obama, 54.5-44.2. In other words, given PA's electoral schizophrenia I'm not going to hold my breath for us to wind up in the GOP column next year.

Pennsylvania should certainly be strongly contested by the GOP in this cycle, but it's going to take a lot of work if the game for the Electoral College is winner takes all. This story from yesterday's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette gives we conservatives something to rally behind.

PA Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi is rounding up support to switch Pennsylvania from winner takes all to apportioning our electoral votes by congressional district, with the two "senate" EC votes going to the winner of the statewide popular vote. Personally, I think this is a great idea, especially since it is pretty much guaranteed to make my vote against President Obama count for something.

In the 2008 election, Barack Obama carried 9 of PA's 19 districts while John McCain won in 10, including my own (PA-4). Had a by-district apportionment scheme been in effect in '08, PA would have cast 11 EC votes for Obama and 10 for McCain. Those 10 EC votes would have been a drop in the bucket compared to Obama's margin of victory, but could be very important in 2012.

I'm a fan of the Electoral College. I think the framers of the Constitution got it right that we should be a republic and not a direct democracy. I'm appalled by the short-sighted movements to either directly elect the President or to award a state's Electoral College votes to the winner of the national popular vote, should it be at variance with the state's tally. States have already given too much of their influence away.

The framers also got it right in Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 when they wrote:

Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress

I'm all in favor of devolving power and influence from a central, national government to as close to the people as is practical. Apportioning presidential electors to individual congressional districts does just that. It's both a smart and constitutional solution.

I expect Barack Obama to go down in a historic electoral defeat next year - and think that there's a chance the GOP nominee could take it all - but the pragmatist in me looks at the last three electoral cycles and says it's time to take what we can get to the bank.

I'm wondering now what the Electoral College would have looked like in 2000, 2004, and 2008 if every state apportioned by district (only Maine and Nebraska currently do so), but I don't have the time to compile that now. Perhaps for the future...