A Lanslide Map

[pbrower2a]

Obama landslide, as it looks on Thursday following Election Day:

deep red                  Obama 10% margin or greater  290
medium red              Obama, 5-9.9% margin  88
pale red                   Obama, margin under 5% 107
white                        too close to call  6
pale blue                  Republican  under 5%  14
medium blue             Republican  5-9.9% margin  22
deep blue                 Republican over 10% 4

Mississippi is still up for grabs. President Obama's barest win is Tennessee and his barest loss is Louisiana.  President Obama had maxed out in much of America in 2008 and held on there; he gained enough in Colorado, Iowa, New Hampshire, and Virginia to go over 55% in each state. His gains are largely in places that he lost badly in 2008, where he picked up most of the voters that used to go reliably to southern moderates like Carter and Clinton. Kansas and Nebraska have shown that given a choice between a sane liberal and a right-wing nut, they go for the sane liberal as in 1964. Big GOP margins in some Western states have been severely eroded.

Obama had to win Florida by about 8% to have a shot at winning Texas because Texas is best described politically as Oklahoma grafted onto Florida. Obama lost Oklahoma, but he did win Florida by about 8%.

Utah is not an oversight; the GOP nominee was callow enough to say stupid things about the LDS Church, and Mormons have shown the Republican nominee the consequences of a "macaca" moment, which says much about the GOP nominee.  That's only one state, but it is a big lesson.

This is a coast-to-coast, border-to-Gulf, border-to-border disaster for the GOP.

I concur with this one as an Obama loss in a landslide:

with the caveat that whether Obama wins or loses Michigan depends upon the African-American turnout. The Twin Cities and Milwaukee just don't have the black population that Greater Detroit has. Maine splits its electoral votes this time. Ignore the intensity of colors and the EV counts here.

[pbrower2a]

pbrower2a,

In your Democratic Landslide scenario, you have Utah carrying over 10 points for a re-elected Barack Obama. I'm thinking you meant to indicate that Utah's margins would come down to the 10-point-plus range for the 2012 Republican challenger. (Not that this thread is about 2012.)

(In 2008, John McCain carried heavily-Republican Utah by 28 points, down 40% from the 45-point margin carried in 2004 by George W. Bush.)

Note on Mississippi: John McCain carried it in 2008 by 13 points, and won neighboring Alabama by 21 points. With 1960 an interesting twist (Harry Byrd), these two haven't disagreed on a presidential candidate since 1840.

The landslide scenario that I show for President Obama is so unlikely that I have to figure that the GOP nominee is crass or callow enough to offend LDS sensibilities by denouncing Mormons as "not real Christians". That is much more than a "macaca moment"; that's a bungled campaign of the worst kind. For President Obama to win such a landslide he will have to face an incredibly-weak opponent under unusually-favorable circumstances for himself. President Obama has proved without question that he is an extremely adept campaigner capable of exploiting any weakness of an opponent while playing by Queensbury rules. I just can't imagine President Obama facing someone as incompetent as would be necessary for my landslide scenario.

The landslide scenario the other way suggests that things have generally gone badly. 

The strongest victory that I can imagine for President Obama is roughly an Eisenhower-scale win.