Electoral College Needs Rehab

Dem will get slice of state's 5

(NEWSER) - Barack Obama has won a single Nebraska electoral vote in post-election counting, the first time the state has split the vote since a 1991 law allowed the practice, the AP reports. No Democrat has gotten a vote in the state since Lyndon Johnson in 1964. More»

Campaign wants to pick up just one of Nebraska's electoral votes

(NEWSER) - Forty-eight of 50 states award electoral votes on a winner-take-all basis, but Nebraska, divvies up electoral votes by congressional district—and the Obama campaign sees an opening, reports the Washington Post. By concentrating just on the Omaha area, the Democrats are trying to pick up a single electoral vote in a state that George W. Bush won by 22 points in 2004. More»

Omaha may have to wait a week for results

(NEWSER) - Nebraska was never a swing state, but its unique system of assigning electoral votes has left it with a surprising question mark after election night. The 2nd Congressional District, which includes Omaha, remains too close to call, with John McCain leading President-elect Barack Obama by 569 votes. And 9,000 provisional and early ballots are still uncounted, reports the Omaha World-Herald. More»

Democrats would love to have state's 34 electoral votes back

(NEWSER) - Rick Perry’s talk of seceding from the union might seem crazy, but calling the Texas governor's bluff would be a great deal for Democrats, writes Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com. Consider:

• Democrats would suddenly have a filibuster-proof majority in the 98-seat Senate.
• Republicans would lose eight more House members than Democrats.
• George W. Bush would never have been elected.

Obama has a 96.7% chance of victory, 538 predicts

(NEWSER) - John McCain isn’t gaining any ground in the polls, according to FiveThirtyEight, which pegs Obama’s odds of victory at 96.7% to McCain’s 3.3%. As of yesterday, polls predict a final electoral score of 351-187, numbers unchanged from the day before. National tracking polls showed minuscule moves in McCain’s direction, but that hasn’t shown up in state-by-state polling. More»