Census Won't Help GOP in 2012 Presidential Race

Any gains that flow to Republicans in Congress because of redistricting after the 2010 census are not likely to carry over to the 2012 presidential race, The New York Times FiveThirtyEight political blog reports. President Barack Obama, for example, would have won the White House in 2010 even if the electoral college then had looked like it will in 2012.

In fact, FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver writes, “the outcome of every presidential election in the past century would have been the same had the new numbers been used.”

Under the redrawn 2012 map of electoral college votes,  Obama would have collected six fewer electors than he actually did in 2010 for a revised total of 359 -- still well over the required 270 and ahead of his GOP challenger, Sen. John McCain. President George W. Bush’s 2000 electoral-college margin over Vice President Al Gore would have been slightly higher under the same scenario, assuming the same outcome in Florida.

Silver estimates a small chance -- 2 percent to 3 percent -- that the 2012 electoral college map will determine who wins the presidency.

“And even if the election is close, it is nevertheless a long shot to be quite close enough that six electoral votes would make the difference,” he writes.