Any word on Missouri and North Carolina?

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

For the record Clinton got 370 and 379 in his 2 victories, so Obama did NOT outperform Clinton, regardless of your view on the Perot impact.

Not to resurrect a four-year-old argument or anything, but the vast majority of Perot voters were disgruntled conservatives.  Take Perot out of the equation in 1992, and Clinton wins 50-48 with 280-290 Evs if he wins at all.

I had a map made at some point of how things would have gone in 1992 without Perot.  Without a doubt Bush would have won OH, NJ, CO, MT, GA, NV, ME, and NH.  That brings Clinton down to 302 Evs.  Arguably, Bush also could have taken KY, CT, and WI (iffy), bringing Clinton down to 275.  MI, PA, and LA are also in the conversation, depending on how many Perot votes you want to give to Bush.

Bush would have been able to concentrate all his firepower on Clinton without Perot around, and that also would have helped him.

So 365 EVs without the help of a third candidate is a pretty good result for a newly-elected Democrat.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

And many felt that Reagan's "landslide" in 1980 was mostly due to Anderson siphoning off Carter votes.  I happen to disagree with that as well, but there's little doubt that Anderson helped make the electoral college a bigger blowout than it otherwise would have been.

I'm not certain Anderson's support was all that lopsided.  He didn't get that many votes from the South, and it was there that Reagan flipped the most Carter states (ten of them, or eleven if you count MO).  Anderson was attractive to a lot of Republicans who found Reagan too extreme (although it's difficult to imagine how any Republican of any stripe would vote for a 50-cent gas tax hike in 1980).

Carter got blown out in the EC because Southern Evangelicals deserted him for Reagan, and the South was his main source of electoral strength.