Diary – 11 October 2012

Straight off the overnight plane from a work trip to Miami I head for Paddy Power in Camberwell. I think I know what the result of the American election is going to be. Luckily for me (or perhaps for them) they are still closed so I wheel my suitcase home and the moment passes. My plan had been to lay a tenner on Romney winning and Biden remaining vice president. A 269/269 split in the electoral college is a real possibility (Romney takes Florida, Ohio, North Carolina and Nevada but Obama holds some of the smaller states, plus Virginia, and gets to the tie) and, in theory at least, an election settled in the House of Representatives, which would vote, in state blocs, for the Republican presidential candidate; and the Senate, which would choose the vice president, probably electing the Democrat. Of course, in the modern world the pressure on the members of the electoral college to change their allegiance and back the man who won the popular vote would be intense, so it might never get to congress.