Eleições nos EUA - há quatro anos

A "luta de classes" e as eleições nos EUA

Why Obama Will Embrace the 99 Percent, por Nate Silver (New York Times):

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The popular vote is one thing, however. The Electoral College is another — and Romney could have more vulnerabilities there.

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All told, there are 101 electoral votes in swing states that Obama could either put into play or make more secure under the populist paradigm — well more than the 36 he might lose among Virginia, Colorado and New Jersey. 

The reason for the imbalance is that most wealthy whites do not live in swing states but in enclaves that the sociologist Charles Murray calls SuperZIPs. Most of these are in states like New York, California, Maryland and Massachusetts that are very far from being competitive. (There are also a significant number of SuperZIPs in the Dallas and Houston metro areas in Texas, but Obama probably wasn’t going to win the Lone Star State anyway.) 

But what if Rick Santorum were to steal the Republican nomination away from Romney? After his sweep of the contests in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri on Feb. 7, he looks like a more viable candidate — one who doesn’t seem as beholden to the 1 percent as Romney does. He has been successful at making Obama’s supposed elitism a theme of his campaign. And he is more conservative on social policy than on fiscal policy, which runs against the consensus view in the Virginia and New Jersey suburbs but puts him in line with the preferences of middle-income voters in the center of the country. 

Still, Santorum, who rates as a 68 on the ideology scale (the same as a less-plausible nominee, Newt Gingrich), would probably be weaker than Romney in the popular vote. According to the model, Obama would be a 77 percent favorite to win the popular vote against Santorum given 2.5 percent G.D.P. growth.

Republicans wouldn’t care about that, however, if Santorum carried Ohio and Michigan — and perhaps even his home state, Pennsylvania — places where economic concerns tend to take precedence. Under these conditions, in fact, Republicans might be able to win the Electoral College while losing the popular vote.

Nesta linha, há uns dias uma sondagem feita apenas nos "estados oscilantes", indicava que nestes Santorum teria mais chances que Romney de derrotar Obama (mas isto foi antes de Santorum ter alegadamente sido cilindrado no último debate...). Será que os Democratas que estão a pensar votar Santorum nas primárias Republicanas para lançar a confusão não estarão a cometer um erro muito grave?

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"Santorum", neste contexto, pode ser visto como uma designação genérica para "candidato republicano com um apelo populista blue-collar, com posições bastante conservadoras nalgumas questões sociais mas com menos entusiasmo pelo liberalismo económico do que é comum entre os conservadores norte-americanos"; outros exemplos poderiam ser Pat Buchanan em 1992 e 1996 e Mike Huckabee em 2008.