President Obama has a Midwest Problem

After the 2010 Midterm elections the pundits had just about predicted all Democrats would be out of office by 2012. Some acknowledged that these trends followed typical midterm election results and not any specific referendum, but I think the most telling referendum in today's electorate is that they will vote out the incumbent no matter who it is.

After careful analysis of the election results it became very apparent to me that in spite of the 2010 election results, President Obama's 2012 electability is still quite strong and that is without even taking into consideration the weak field of GOP Presidential candidates.

The biggest shake-up was in the House with the Democrats losing a whopping 63 seats, but electoral votes are allocated statewide not in House Districts so one would be hard-pressed to extrapolate those results to statewide election results in 2012. The better barometer would be the statewide races for the Senate and for Governor. Which on the surface considering the Democrats lost 6 seats in each race you would think would reflect a similar result as the outcome of the House races, but there are a few things to consider.

When you examine the states that flipped from Democrats to GOP you will see a trend. In the Senate race it was ND, AR, WI, IL, IN, PA, and AR. In the Gubernatorial race it was WY, NM, KS, OK, TN, OH, PA, ME, IA, WI, and MI.

So the first thing you notice is...that is a lot of losses!!! Then you look state by state and you will quickly realize many of these are states that President Obama didn't win in the landslide victory in 2008. So if you consider what is really at risk in 2012 are the states that he won that flipped from the Democrats to GOP which leaves NM, IA, WI, MI, OH, PA, and ME.

If you look at this collection of states and you stayed awake in Geography class you will now understand the title of my blog post. Democrats had big losses in the traditionally Democratic Midwest. This will be the key battleground for President Obama in the 2012 election campaign. Democrats need to get laser focused on the issues that are concerning the Midwest and make sure it is clear that the GOP candidates are not campaigning to fix these issues, but rather to usher in a political ideology of failed policies. We have seen the results of this in states like WI, so voters are already seeing the error of their ways... I notice the Presidential Bus Tour is focused on the Midwest so this concern has not been lost by the Campaign.