watchlives0071: USA ELECTIONS 2012

States won by Democrats in 2000, 2004, and 2008 Illinois −1 Massachusetts −1 Michigan −1 New Jersey −1 New York −2 Pennsylvania −1 Washington +1	States won by Republicans in 2000, 2004, and 2008 Arizona +1 Georgia +1 Louisiana −1 Missouri −1 South Carolina +1 Texas +4 Utah +1	Remaining states Florida +2 Iowa −1 Nevada +1 Ohio −2

Eight States (Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Washington) gained votes, due to reapportionment based on the 2010 Census. Similarly ten States (Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania) lost votes.

In the political climate of 2011, this would give the Democratic Party a net loss of six electoral votes in states won by Al Gore, John Kerry and Barack Obama in the past three presidential elections, rendering the party a national total of 242. Conversely, the Republican Party will achieve a net gain of six electoral votes in states won by George W. Bush and John McCain in the past three presidential elections, rendering the GOP a national total of 181. Votes allocated to remaining states (i.e., those where the majority voted for both Democratic and Republican candidates during the last three presidential elections) remain unchanged from the national total of 115.

In 2011, several states enacted new laws that the Democratic Party attacked as attempts to improve the Republican Party's presidential prospects. Florida, Georgia, Ohio,^[9] Tennessee and West Virginia made their early voting periods shorter. Florida and Iowa barred all ex-felons from voting. Kansas, South Carolina,^[10] Tennessee, Texas^[11] and Wisconsin^[12] began requiring voters to identify themselves with government-issued IDs before they could cast their ballots. Barack Obama, the NAACP, and the Democratic Party fought against many of the new state laws,^[13] and Bill Clinton denounced it, saying, "There has never been in my lifetime, since we got rid of the poll tax and all the Jim Crow burdens on voting, the determined effort to limit the franchise that we see today".^[14] He said the moves would effectively disenfranchise core voter blocs that trend liberal, college students, Blacks, and Latinos.^[15]^[16] Rolling Stone magazine criticized the American Legislative Exchange Council for lobbying in states to bring about these laws.^[13] The Obama campaign fought against the Ohio law, pushing for a petition and statewide referendum to repeal it in time for the 2012 election.^[17]

Pennsylvania proposed a new plan that would change its representation in the electoral college from a winner-take-all model to a district-by-district model.^[18] The Governorship and both houses of its congress were Republican-controlled, and the move was seen as an affront to Obama's re-election.^[19]^[20]^[21]

Nomination process

Main articles: United States presidential primary and United States presidential nominating convention

In the United States, there are two major political parties, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. There are also several minor parties, usually called third parties, none of which has won a presidential election since 1848 (Lincoln's National Union Party, which won in 1864, was a short-lived coalition of Republicans and Northern Democrats rather than an independent party), although in1912 former President Theodore Roosevelt, as candidate of the Progressive Party came in second by a wide margin.^[22] Most media and public focus is on the two major parties.

Each party hosts candidates who go through a nomination process to determine the presidential nominee for that party. The nomination process consists of primaries and caucuses, held by the 50 states, Guam, Puerto Rico, Washington, D.C., U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands. The winner of each of these primary elections usually receives delegates proportional to the percentage of the popular vote that candidate received in each states. In many Republican primaries, all the state's delegates are awarded to the winning candidate. In the Democratic Party, high-ranking party members known as superdelegates each receive one vote in the convention. Whichever candidate has the majority of the delegates at the end of the primary elections is designated the presumptive nominee until he or she is formally nominated and endorsed for the presidency by his or her political party. This is done by the aforementioned delegates for each party at their respective party's national convention.