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Originally Posted by Airbornelawyer
What it does, I suppose, is show you where the fights are. Rather than thinking in terms of swing states, you look within those states for the purplest of counties/electoral districts.
You do take into account their demographics: don't waste time on a 50/50 county with only a few thousand votes like Madison County, Florida (Bush: 3,038, Gore: 3,014 to Bush: 4,196, Kerry: 4,048). Instead, go into places like Pinellas County, which accounts for about 6-7% of Florida's electorate. In 2000, Bush lost Pinellas County by 184,825 to 200,630 (and 10,000 for Nader). In 2004, Bush took Pinellas 225,627 to 225,367. They took a bluish purple county and made it pure purple. Now they have to work on making it redder. Pasco County, which was almost pure purple (Bush: 68,582, Gore: 69,564, Nader: 3,393), is now red: Bush: 103,198 to Kerry: 84,731. That's a 40,000 vote improvement in just two counties of a state won by less than 600 votes in 2000.
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