Candidates Play the Difficult Game of Betting on the Electoral College

For the presidential campaigns, building a winning majority in the Electoral College is as much an art as a science. Every four years, strategists for the two parties’ nominees closet themselves with reams of polling data and years of voting history to plot a path for their candidate toward the 270 electoral votes they need to win. And then they hope for the best.

That process is already well underway in Austin, Texas, and Nashville. And the early readings in both camps largely echo the conclusion of Republican pollster Whit Ayres: “For George W. Bush and Al Gore, the strategic challenge is roughly equal: They start with a similar base and a similar set of possibilities.”

That early parity stands in marked contrast with most elections in the past 30 years. During the 1970s and 1980s, so many states voted so reliably Republican for president that political scientists spoke convincingly of a GOP “Electoral College lock.” In 1992, recession helped Bill Clinton pick that lock, and by early 1996 economic recovery had helped move so many states so securely into his camp that Bob Dole could never construct a realistic scenario to win.

But this year, both campaigns can plausibly map out a path to victory. Indeed, to a striking extent, they agree on the states likely to be most influential in picking the winner. Both sides see a similar pattern emerging--with Vice President Gore strongest along the coasts, Texas Gov. Bush building on an inland foundation in the South and Mountain West, and the winner most probably decided by a handful of Midwestern battlegrounds, with Florida looming as a wild card.

Though virtually all of America has shared in the past decade’s economic prosperity, this is likely to be an election defined by sharp regional disparities--with cultural issues driving much of the difference. Gore appears poised to run best in heavily suburban states, primarily along the East and West coasts, where Bush’s conservative views on abortion, guns and the environment are the most out of step with swing voters.

Conversely, the most likely path to victory for Bush is through a “heartland majority” that captures more culturally conservative Rust Belt states such as Ohio, Kentucky, Missouri and Pennsylvania, where those issues don’t break so decisively for Democrats. In those states, the cultural current may even flow in the opposite direction: Gore could be hurt by lingering distaste over Clinton’s impeachment and resistance to his own views on allowing gays in the military and licensing handgun owners.

Most analysts see the two candidates starting with a comparable list of states leaning strongly their way. The Bush calculations begin with the 16 states--almost none of them touching an ocean--that voted for George Bush in 1988 and 1992 and Bob Dole in 1996. Those states provide 135 electoral votes. Then the Bush advisors assume that in a close race, they will recapture several traditionally Republican states that Clinton narrowly won in 1992 or 1996 such as Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Montana and Florida. That would lift Bush’s electoral votes to about 190.

Gore’s base starts with the 11 states (offering 107 electoral votes) that have voted Democratic in each election since 1988. He adds to that a strong edge in New England states like New Hampshire and Connecticut as well as California and probably New Jersey. That would also push the vice president’s base total of electoral votes to about 190.

This far from the election, neither side entirely concedes the other’s base. Bush aides talk about contesting California and perhaps New Jersey--though the most sober GOP strategists acknowledge that the trends in both states make them extremely difficult in a close race. Both are culturally moderate states where anti-gun-control, anti-abortion Republicans have had little success recently. For the same reasons, Illinois could also tilt toward Gore sooner than later.

More realistically, Bush aides have their eyes on four other states in the Gore base: Wisconsin, Iowa, Oregon and perhaps Washington state. If Bush can peel away any of those, he’d give himself more margin of error in the swing states.

The same is true for Gore as he eyes the GOP base. Bush aides reasonably assume that any state Dole carried in 1996 (while losing nationally to Clinton by 8 percentage points) is likely to stay with the Texas governor if the 2000 race is closer. But Gore has signaled he intends to at least test his possibilities in Georgia and North Carolina; in each, heavy black turnout helped Democrats win key statewide elections in 1998.

Florida looms even larger in Gore’s eyes, despite his unsteady performance in the Elian Gonzalez imbroglio. In 1996, Clinton attracted the same suburban voters in Florida that he did in the North and won the state handily; if Gore can hold it in 2000 (polls now show it’s close), it would force Bush to probably win all of the largest toss-up states. That would leave Bush needing to draw the electoral equivalent of an inside straight--like Democrats during the years of the GOP “lock.”

Short of an Inchon-like breakthrough for Gore in Florida or (less likely) Bush in California, both sides expect the race to turn on a short-list of swing states neither can count on. This group, which includes secondary contests like New Mexico and Louisiana, is centered on Midwestern battlegrounds led by Kentucky, Ohio, Missouri, Pennsylvania and Michigan (though Michigan may tilt slightly more toward Gore than the other four).

Of the five, Ohio and Missouri look most promising for Bush: Clinton won each in 1996, but only with about 47.5% of the vote. That was enough because Ross Perot carried more than 10% in each place; if Patrick J. Buchanan, the presumptive Reform Party nominee, can’t match that performance this year, the percentage needed to win in both states may rise to a level Gore can’t reach. Kentucky looks like a close call straight through and Pennsylvania looks both close and critical. “If it’s going to come down to any one state,” a senior Bush advisor compellingly insists, “Pennsylvania is going to be the key.”

Florida’s importance is likely to keep Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) on Gore’s vice-presidential short-list for some time. Likewise, if Bush picks his vice president based on the electoral map, no one looks better than Pennsylvania Gov. Thomas J. Ridge. Only a handful of states are likely to pick the next president--and these closely matched contenders will probably need every edge they can muster in all of them.

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See current and past Brownstein columns on The Times’ Web site at: https://www.latimes.com/brownstein.