Battleground March 4

Since I now have a crude map template, here's where the action is. This time both parties are having their contests in the same states.


Ohio (OH), Rhode Island (RI), Texas (TX) and Vermont (VT).

The delegate allocations are different for each party and the same type of election may not even be happening. But I can give the number of Electoral college votes and how significant they were in the last election.

Ohio: 20 EC votes (seventh largest out of 50 plus Washington D.C.), Republican in 2004 by 2.1%.

Texas: 34 EC votes (second largest after California 55, third is New York 31), Republican in 2004 by 22.87%.

Rhode Island: 4 EC votes (joint 39th largest), Democratic in 2004 by 20.75%.

Vermont: 3 EC votes (smallest possible along with six other states and Washington D.C.), Democratic in 2004 by 20.14%.

N.B. I've got a feeling these percentages are slightly different than some I've published elsewhere. These ones include the presence of third party candidates, which can change things. I generally compare only the two leading parties.

For example, if the Democrat gets 45%, the Republican 40%, and others get 5%, the majority is 5%. But if I only compare the 450,000 votes of a Democrat, with the 400,000 votes of a Republican, ignoring the rest, the margin is 50k out of 950k, so about 5,26%. I'll try to make sure I keep clear which calculation I'm making.

For the Republicans, Texas and Ohio make sense to worry about as a candidate. For the Democrats, Ohio is the one I would want to show myself as a strong contender. But there are more delegates in Texas... and it's a close race.