Texas Wants to Secede? That Sounds Great!

Nate Silver does electoral math for 5 Lone Star States

(NEWSER) - An obscure provision of Texas statehood gives it the right to split into five smaller states, writes Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com. He outlines the potential new entities:

1. New Texas: Centered on Austin, as populous as Kentucky, and split down the middle politically—city vs. suburbs.

State-level apportioning is the only viable way towards electing the president by popular vote

(NEWSER) - The 538 electors chosen to represent the will of the people cast their ballots for president today, officially ending the contest between Barack Obama and John McCain, writes Randall Lane for the New York Times. The otherwise-predictable ritual included a twist: a Nebraska elector voting for the candidate who won his congressional district (Obama), not the statewide vote (McCain). More»

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»

Obama's 2008 effort gives party an edge in 2010 Senate races

(NEWSER) - Senate Democrats have a silver lining heading into the 2010 election: their party’s made huge gains in voter registration. The last time this crop of senators was on the ballot was 2004, when George W. Bush’s field operation, then the most sophisticated ever, was registering hordes of Republicans. But Barack Obama’s 2008 effort “made the 2004 Republican model look antiquated,” writes Tom Schaller on FiveThirtyEight.com . More»