Romney’s Austerity Dictatorship Missed US

Barack Obama has won a second term as tenant of the White House, but by a paper-thin margin. Obama won the Electoral College by 332 votes to 206, and surpassed Romney in the popular vote by some 2.8 million votes, equivalent to 50.4% against Romney’s 48.1% (with the rest going to minor parties), but these figures obscure rather than reveal how close this race really was.

Victory in the US presidential election has nothing to do with the nationwide popular vote total, but rather results from 50 separate state by state elections in which the winner takes all principle prevails. From this point of view, the states which gave Obama a majority in the Electoral College were Ohio, Virginia, Florida, and New Hampshire; if these electoral votes had been transferred to Romney, the Republican candidate would have won the day.

Obama’s combined popular vote majority in these critical swing states amounted, according to preliminary figures, to about 315,000 votes – about 0.26% or just over one quarter of 1% of all votes cast. Therefore, if about 160,000 votes had gone into Romney’s column instead of going to Obama, we would now be dreading the onset of a Romney regime. In other words, Obama won by about 1/8 of 1% of the 118 million votes cast. This is no landslide.

In the Senate, the Republicans had been expected to score major gains, most likely seizing control of the upper chamber because of structural reasons, but the right wing party lost two seats and has to settle for 45 senators compared to 55 Democrats and pro-Democratic independents.