In a matter of 24 hours, Hurricane Sandy has taken the lives of at least 50 Americans, left millions without power across the Northeast, and devastated populous areas on the coast such as NYC and Atlantic City. Images of flooded roads and subways, infrastructure like the Atlantic City boardwalk, floating unattached from its home, broken into pieces, and homes and trees destroyed by the storm, are everywhere – especially on the web. Concerns for public safety and the safety of First responders and EMTs have become increasingly audible, and increasingly serious as the tragedy sets in.
With public transportation shut down in state after state, work and school postponed for thousands, and even more stuck in their homes, the last week before Election Day certainly came with a surprise twist: the most anticipated week of the campaign has been outdone.
While electric companies are tirelessly working to restore power to millions of homes, they are also trying to bring electricity back to polling locations by Tuesday. Electronic voting in a reported six or more states would be severely affected by outages due to the storm. Everything from filling out ballots, to submitting votes, to physically getting voters to polling locations, could disrupt this highly awaited process on Tuesday.
Of the 11 battleground states up for grabs in this election according to 270towin.org, six are concentrated in the Northeast, and have seen effects of the storm such as power outages, floods, fires, and snowstorms, which could have a major affect on voting on the 6th and before, for those states that have early voting. In particular, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia depend to a great extent on electricity to cast votes. As of Tuesday, 250,000 people in Ohio had no electricity, over 300,000 in Virginia, and about 550,000 in Pennsylvania.
Besides swing states, the vast majority of the damage caused by Sandy has happened in blue states (those who are predicted to go to Obama), a fact which already coincides with the cancellation of early voting in many states, including Virginia, North Carolina and Maryland.
For many college students, this won’t make much of a difference, seeing as the majority have or will vote by absentee ballot. Although, this demographic tends to be, or at least last year was, more democratic than republican.
Nonetheless, in all likelihood the storms will not actually hinder voting in any substantial way. By Tuesday, the majority of districts will have regained power, and, moreover regained incentive to make their way to the voting booth.
One thing recovery from the storm will NOT bring back is the loss of campaign time for both Romney and President Obama in these areas, as well as advertising time in key states (like Ohio and Pennsylvania.) Any attempts by Romney to “ad buy” Pennsylvania and steal their electoral votes away from Obama’s camp.
The biggest influence of this untimely natural disaster on this election will be its ability to place Obama back in his role of President and out of his campaigning shoes. Honestly, the thousands (millions?) of people who are tired and fed up with months and months of campaigning from the candidates will be satisfied with seeing their president taking on such an important leadership role in these coming days. Already, President Obama has been praised by Republican Governor Chris Christie, a huge Romney supporter, and others for his exemplary efforts to aid victims of the storm. Historically, Presidents who have been in term during disasters of this sort have seen an extraordinary spike in approval ratings. Predicting that this will be the same for Obama during this time of tragedy is not a stretch.
