Battle Ground States

[USANick7]

Now first of all, most of the media pundits have it completely wrong.

Indiana, is not a battle ground state. Nor is Georgia, North Carolina, Missouri, North Dakota or Montana. These are republican strongholds in presidential races. This is wishful thinking by the left at its worst.

Here are real battle ground states:

New Hampshire (Leans McCain)
Virginia (Leans McCain)
Florida (Leans McCain)
Ohio (Leans McCain)
New Mexico (Leans McCain)
Colorado (Leans McCain)
Nevada (Leans McCain)

Pennsylvania (Leans Obama)
Iowa (leans Obama)
Michigan (Leans Obama)
Wisconsin (Leans Obama)
Minnesota (Leans Obama)

What is interesting is that Penn, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota shouldnt be in play. They should be pretty solid Democrat. But they're not for various reasons.

Much of that is due to the fact that McCain is beloved in allot of more moderate states.

Pennsylvania for instance has a powerful Catholic voting demographic, who wont take kindly to Obam's infanticide tendencies.

Michigan has been solidly run into the ground by their liberal Governor who thinks raising taxes on business is a cure for unemployment.

And Wisconsin and Minnesota because they just tend to lean a little more toward the middle then your run of the mill left coast / New England "intellectually elite" centers of socialism.

I think McCain has a chance of picking up a couple states currently in the Obama column.

I think that Iowa and Wisconsin may be the most vulnerable right now.

But Obama is going to have to spend money in places he shouldnt have too, while McCain can focus on the normal areas.

McCain will have to spend more in VA and OH then normal, but not as much as Obama will have to spend in places like Wisconsin and Minnesota.

Furthermore, Obama HAS to win Wisconsin and Minnesota. If he loses either, the game is up.

McCain has to win Ohio, and he better win Virginia, but the trend is in his favor.

Overall I think that McCain will give us the biggest republican win we have had in 16 years. With the ever so slight chance of a blowout.

If McCain were to win every state that Bush lost by fewer than 3 percentage points in 04 the map would look very red (that sucks by the way, we should be blue!)

Now it is highly unlikely, but if that did happen that would mean that McCain would pick up New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

If you change it to 3.5, he picks up Michigan and Minnesota.

By contrast if the rolls reversed, Obama would pick up only Iowa, Ohio, Nevada and New Mexico.

Assuming he were to pick up all of those except Ohio, it would still not be enough to put him over the top (even with New Hampshire then it is a 269 / 269 tie).

So what we have is Obama fighting to pick off VA (near impossible) or Ohio (possible but not highly likely) in order to win the election.

What does this tell us...

If McCain picks up one 2004 Blue state (with the exception of New Hampshire which I'm giving to him), go ahead and turn your TV off safe in the knowledge that America is safe from socialism for 4 more years.

If that doesn't happen, then as soon as the results are in in Ohio, we will know who our next president will be.

There is your official 18F analysis of the 2008 election for the week.

take it for what its worth....

NOTICE: This analysis and a dollar will get you a cup of coffee.

This analysis and 6 dollars will get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks

[The Reaper]

The media has a history over the past few elections, of calling Dim states early, and waiting till the last minute to call the Republican victories. In the last election, I saw Dim victories called with less than 2% of the votes in, and Republican states with margins of several hundred thousand that were in excess of 90% returned, and which were still not being called. This was significant in Florida in 2000, where the conservatives in the Panhandle were told well before the polls closed that the state had gone to Gore. This supports my belief that the MSM is in the tank for the Dims. At the very least, it is the networks trying to scoop one another and to be the first to declare the victor.

This has a net effect of depressing Republican turnout in the states that close later, and of making it appear that the Dims are winning in a landslide. The Dims go to celebrate or to bed early, and awaken to find that they, in fact, did not win, which leads to suspicions of stolen elections, etc.

IMHO, they should not call states till the polls are closed and the margin has reached which cannot mathematically be overcome; i.e., one candidate is ahead by 100,000 votes, and there are less than 100,000 votes outstanding to be counted. Calling races based on exit polling should be prohibited.

Yes, this would mean that the results would not be known till the following morning, but so what? It used to take weeks to know who won, and we survived that.

Just my .02, YMMV.

TR

[USANick7]

The media has a history over the past few elections, of calling Dim states early, and waiting till the last minute to call the Republican victories. In the last election, I saw Dim victories called with less than 2% of the votes in, and Republican states with margins of several hundred thousand that were in excess of 90% returned, and which were still not being called. This was significant in Florida in 2000, where the conservatives in the Panhandle were told well before the polls closed that the state had gone to Gore. This supports my belief that the MSM is in the tank for the Dims. At the very least, it is the networks trying to scoop one another and to be the first to declare the victor.

This has a net effect of depressing Republican turnout in the states that close later, and of making it appear that the Dims are winning in a landslide. The Dims go to celbrate or to bed early, and awaken to find that they, in fact, did not win, which leads to suspicions of stolen elections, etc.

IMHO, they should not call states till the polls are closed and the margin has reached which cannot mathematically be overcome; i.e., one candidate is ahead by 100,000 votes, and there are less than 100,000 votes outstanding to be counted. Calling races based on exit polling should be prohibited.

Yes, this would mean that the results would not be known till the following morning, but so what? It used to take weeks to know who won, and we survived that.

Just my .02, YMMV.

TR

I think you are right on the polls closing thing...it would drive me absolutely nuts, but you are right.