I wrote yesterday that, because of the unusual nature of this election cycle and Obama's huge spending advantages in states outside the traditional few "battlegrounds," some normal swing states (OH, FL, etc) are looking better for McCain than are normally safe red states (VA, CO, NC, etc).
News is out today that McCain, realizing he has lost N.M. and Iowa for sure (out of the Bush '04 states) and will probably lose at least one other red state - enough to put Obama over the top - he will have to pick up a blue state. This has been his thinking for weeks, as he continued campaigning in Wisconsin and Minnesota despite poll numbers saying he was dead there.
Now he is aiming for Pennsylvania - a state that has been trending blue in the mid-double digits for the past several weeks. But does he have a choice?
Looking at the map, let's say that McCain manages to hold on to Ohio and Florida. Let's say he holds Missouri, too, which has only been trending blue as of late. Then let's shade in all the states that have been trending consistently blue or within the margin of error since the economic meltdown. That puts Nevada, Colorado, North Carolina, Virginia, and Nevada all in Obama's column. That puts him at 306.
Now say that McCain - SOMEHOW - picks up Pennsylvania. Obama still wins with 285. And in fact, he can lose any one of those other states and still beat McCain. Of those four, North Carolina seems the least safe - the others have all been showing SOLID Obama leads for weeks - and that would still give Obama 270 electoral votes, beating McCain by 2.
So even IF McCain holds Florida, Ohio, and Missouri, and takes Pennsylvania, he is still on track to lose the election if even most of those other swing states keep up their blue trends.
A NOTE ON THE BRADLEY EFFECT:
I personally think we'll have a bigger chance of seeing this in a northeastern state like New Hampshire, Ohio, or Pennsylvania than one like Virginia and North Carolina. PA / OH / NH are two states where, arguably, we saw some of that in the primaries; not true of VA and NC. In most parts of the northeast, it is pretty expected of people to not show any racial bias, so they may be less likely to tell a pollster they won't vote for Obama. In the southern states, where there is obviously a much broader history of racial conflict, I think that people are already on one side or the other and willing to be honest about their vote. Unlike voters in rural N.H. who don't have any African Americans in their towns and may just feel uncomfortable or unfamiliar with that idea, in N.C. or VA they should probably already have their feelings straight on this. We are furthermore unlikely to see any effect in the west, where African American - white racial strife has been a much smaller marker on history. In the case of NH and PA, at least, Obama is polling far enough ahead that even a huge 5 point effect would still not be enough to ruin him, but my thought is that the McCain campaign probably feels its better to try in places where his numbers might be a little soft than states where they know he is actually, definitely leading by 8 or 12 points.
