While a lot of focus has been put on the national poll numbers,
which point to a close race, elections are won and lost based on
electoral votes. Though Barack Obama and John McCain are
essentially tied in most national polls, when you analyze the race
on a state-by-state basis, it's easy to see why McCain considers
himself the underdog.
Looking at
Real Clear Politics polling averages, I see that 18 states are
currently within the single digits. Of those states, Obama has an
edge in 11 to McCain's 7. To be fair, in many of those states
Obama's edge is statistically insignificant. But far more troubling
for McCain is the fact that Bush carried 12 of these 18 states.
This means that Obama is putting far more 2004 red states in play
than McCain is putting blue states in play. Or to express it
another way, McCain will be defending a lot more turf this fall,
and thus will be more limited in his ability to go on offense.
Obama is competitive in several states that are usually reliably
Republican. In Virginia, which hasn't voted for the Democrat since
LBJ's 1964 landslide, Obama is essentially tied as he is in
Indiana, which Bush won by 21 points in 2004. In North Carolina,
McCain's average lead is 3.5 percent, but Bush won there by 12
points in 2004 -- even though pre-scandal North Carolina Senator
John Edwards was on the opposing ticket. In Iowa, which Bush lost
to Gore but won narrowly against Kerry, Obama has a 5.7 point lead.
Obama campaigned hard in Iowa all of last year in the run up to his
launch pad victory in the caucuses, while McCain largely wrote off
the state. I don't know anybody who thinks McCain is going to win
the state's 7 electoral votes. In New Mexico, which Gore won but
Bush carried in 2004, Obama has a 6-point lead in the latest poll.
He also has a pickup opportunity in Colorado and Nevada, which have
been trending Democratic.
The fact that McCain is keeping things close in such an
unfavorable electoral environment for Republicans certainly says
something. But it's worth noting that of the six Kerry states in
which McCain is within the single digits, all of them are states
that have been battlegrounds in recent elections anyway. Unlike
Obama, he isn't putting long-time Democratic strongholds in play
(i.e. California, New Jersey, etc). Michigan, New Hampshire,
Wisconsin, Minnesota, Oregon, and Pennsylvania may be close, but
that's generally to be expected. Of those six states, I would say
that New Hampshire and Michigan present McCain with the best
opportunity for pickups, while the other four states are a
stretch.
While we can drive ourselves crazy doing the electoral math
between now and Election Day, here's the bottom line. In 2004,
Democrats had a much worse candidate, and the electoral environment
was much more favorable for Republicans, and yet Kerry fell just 18
electoral votes shy of becoming president. Looking at the election
on a state-by-state basis, you can come up with a lot of scenarios
whereby Obama gets to 270 electoral votes, but it's a lot harder to
come up with a combination of states that will put McCain over the
top. This isn't to say it can't be done, but amid all of the focus
on the closeness of the daily national tracking numbers, it's
important to keep in mind what an uphill climb this still is for
McCain.
topics:
John McCain, Barack Obama, Environment, NATO
