Electoral Map

Originally posted on Righteous Ramblings by Jason L. Hubsch

While educating myself on the current election, I came across a great site called 270towin. When you first go there, you are presented with an electoral map of the United States, already filled in red or blue, depending on the leaning of the particular state. Battleground/swing/too close to call states are tan.

The unique thing is that you can click each state to turn it red, blue, or tan. This will automatically update the total electoral vote count at the bottom until one party hits 270. In effect, you can play with the potential possibilites to see which states a party would need to win to win the whole thing. In fact, 270towin even presents the 281 ways Obama/Biden can win, and the 228 ways McCain/Palin can win.

So I started playing with the map. I was curious to learn what the polls in the individual swing states showed, and to populate the map that way. So I popped on over to RealClearPolitics and looked at their Battleground States polling. I used the data that was current at that time, realizing that the reason these states are tan to begin with is because the lead keeps switching between candidates on an almost daily basis. But let's take a look nonetheless.

I filled out the map using the data from RealClearPolitics. The data from Ohio was a tie at the time of this writing, although Rasmussen Reports, who shows McCain ahead in Ohio as of Monday, September 8, 2008. But let's leave it tan for the moment.

What we're left with is this updated electoral map:

You'll notice I left Pennsylvania tan. Here's why: provided current polling data remains where it is through election day, the map will look like the above electoral map. You'll notice that, not yet counting PA and OH, the tally is Obama with 252 and McCain with 245. That means that, for Obama to win, he only needs to win either PA or Ohio. Winning both is not essential to hit 270 electoral votes.

Conversely, McCain needs to win both PA and Ohio to hit 270 electoral votes. If he loses either one of those states, he loses the election.

Therefore, the most likely winning scenario for McCain is #4, winning FL, PA, OH, NC, and VA. His campaign efforts should be focused in these key states, particularly PA and OH. While OH has voted for the Republican nominee for the past two elections, the last time PA voted for the Republican candidate was 1988. Using current trends, the final result would look this this.

Suffice to say that McCain has his work cut out for him to convince a 20-year blue state to cross over.

But it's what must be done if he is to win this election. It iss the key to victory.

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Cross-posted at The Electoral Map and promoted by Soren

Politico's Charlie Mahtesian and Amie Parnes wrote an article yesterday about the "Five Places Obama Should Go," and four out of the five areas they identified were places where he struggled against Clinton: Broward County, FL (Jews), Youngstown, OH (blue-collar, gun-owning Catholics), San Antonio (Latinos) and Mingo Couny, WV (“the heart of the anti-Obama belt").  The fifth suggestion -- Maricopa County, AZ -- was clearly aimed at McCain.

If four out of the five places Obama has to go are aimed at shoring up his base, it means he still has plenty of loose ends to tie up from the primary before he starts trying to win over independents and Republicans. 

With that in mind, where are the five places that McCain should go?

This is a tough one, since most of his weaknesses seem to be more personal (age, speaking skills, Bush) rather than geographic. Still, I think visiting areas where Obama is vulnerable and putting him on the defensive would be a smart move — So, how about:

1. Ohio River Valley Tour -- From Pittsburgh to St. Louis -- When it comes to the Ohio River Valley, the bad news for the GOP is that the party's brand is in poor shape in this border region and has been resulting in substantial loses on the congressional level (think PA-04, OH-18, KY-03, IN-08 and IN-09, and the near-miss in OH-02).  The good news for the GOP is that Obama is very unpopular here and was pummeled by Hillary in the primaries.  In one trip, McCain could hit competitive areas in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Missouri, while also challenging the myth that Kentucky could become competitve and even making a symbolic swing through the Land of Lincoln.
2. Fairfield County, Conn. -- A campaign stop with New York-area Jews and Joe Lieberman would inevitably shine a light on Obama's comments about Iran and would fan media speculation that the state could become competitive.  And Henry Kissinger lives in Kent, an hour up the beautiful Housatonic Valley from Fairfield County -- perhaps he could lend an opinion on Obama's foreign policy?
3. Northern Suburbs of Milwaukee, Wis. -- The suburbs will be key nationwide and Wisconsin is a vital target state for the GOP. The north and west 'burbs of Milwaukee also “remain overwhelmingly Republican,” notes Democratic pollster Paul Maslin. But “If Obama can crack them to any degree he probably wins the state by several points.” Besides shoring up support with voters, a McCain appearance in the “Beer Capital of the World” would also remind the media that he’s the beer track candidate and Obama is the wine track one. It would also be smart to campaign with fellow Teddy Roosevelt Republican Tommy Thompson.
4. Grand Rapids — Michigan might be Obama’s most blue vulnerable state and Gerald Ford’s hometown is at the ideological intersection of what Patrick Ruffini once called "the real dividing lines of" the GOP primary -- wealthy suburbanites, religious conservatives and Ford-like mainline moderates. A smart sidekick would be Mitt Romney, who beat McCain in Grand Rapids by a 38-31% margin.
5. Iowa, Early and Often — Iowa might be McCain’s most vulnerable state; he clearly has never built much of an operation here. He needs to visit Iowa… repeatedly.

Thoughts?

(promoted by Soren)

If Barack Obama wins any of the states in the former Confederacy, it’ll probably be Virginia or North Carolina. But a few analysts have suggested that he could boost African-African turnout across the rest of the south — the Deep South, mind you — to the point where he makes some really red states competitive. Chuck Todd and Marc Ambinder, who were both my editors at The Hotline and who are two of brightest political minds I know, have hinted that Obama could make Georgia and Mississippi interesting.

Chuck wrote in March that “Mississippi's one of those rare Southern states that might be in play in the general election if Obama becomes the nominee. One Dem statistician tells First Read that there are three red states that could swing if African-American turnout was ever maximized (both in registration and in actual turnout): Georgia, Louisiana and, yes, Mississippi. So don’t assume this is just one of those untouchable red states.”

Marc took it a step further in May and broke down the actual numbers, asking, “Did you know that a half a million African Americans in Georgia are eligible to vote but haven’t registered? The Obama campaign knows this. And they plan to register these voters by November, campaign folks say.”  And the Southern Political Report noted on Tuesday that the DCCC and DSCC have already registered 70,000 new voters in some Louisiana parishes.

Stateline also took a look at it on Tuesday and noted that “Some Democrats hold out hope that Obama could actually win one of the six Southern states that he won so convincingly during the primary season — Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina — all of which have voted strongly Republican in recent presidential elections.” But the key phrase from that observation might have been that Dems are “holding out hope,” because after all, it’ll be a long shot.

Tom Schaller, another superb political analyst, actually crunched the numbers (something that no one else has done), and found that Obama is facing steep odds. In a conversation about white voters posted on Salon, Schaller presented his data: 

“I did a correlation between the black share of statewide population in the 11 Confederate states and the share of Bush’s support among white voters, and it correlates at .76 with all 11 confederate states and if you take Texas out, which Bush obviously did well in, though it has a relatively low black population, with a data set of just 10 data points, it correlates at .9. Human height and weight doesn’t correlate at .9. With 10 data points, it’s ridiculous. I don’t even think this is an empirical matter of dispute.”

 Schaller has a point and his numbers are tough to argue with.  But if Obama’s campaign is really about redrawing the electoral map and scrapping the old Clinton-Bush model, then he should leave no stone unturned and leave no county uncontested.

Cross-posted at TheElectoralMap.com