Obama Won’t Be Reelected Without Latinos

Are you into electoral numbers crunching and swing state fortune telling? If you are you’re gonna love this. It’s the most recent presidential electoral vote analysis, done by beyondchron.com.

Here are the basics: the census will reshuffle the electoral vote count for specific states, Latino battleground states will gain in some cases, some of the states that went for Obama in 2008 have lost electoral votes, and because of the President’s low approval rating he stands to lose, outright, some of the states that he won before. Got that? Basically, Obama’s electoral footing at this point is 58 votes less than he had in 2008; he needs 270 to win reelection.

The Latino vote, then, according to beyondchron, is crucial:

While a dozen or so states will be targeted as battlegrounds in 2012, the 49 votes up for grabs in the four key Latino influence states may be the most competitive, and the most important for Obama to secure. These four states and their 49 electoral college votes have demonstrated growth for two straight reapportionment’s – they had 42 combined votes in the 2000 election, grew to 46 for 2004-2008, and now hold 49 votes; growth that was largely driven by the Latino population, as Sylvia Manzano points out. Not only are they growing, but they are highly competitive.

The way the map looks now it would be impossible for Obama to win reelection without winning at least three of four Latino swing states: Florida, Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico.

[Photo by mattlemmon]