Electoral College Breakdown, Installment Eleven (The Battlegrounds)

various

[ought-six]

New Jersey will go for ANY Democrat over Bush, the same as Illinois and Massachusetts.

[Azzurri]

That's a good point. Many of the victims in WTC on 9/11 were NJ residents and they probably still have a special affinity for Bush's performance in the immediate aftermath. Also, NJites are probably not as partisan as the leftists in NY. So, perhaps 2004 will be a special case in NJ where Bush has a chance. I'm not putting money on it, but it could happen.

[Neets]

Ping

[Monty22]

I was wondering why NJ is listed as a Rep slight?!?!?

[Remole]

Great, great work.

Demonstrates the political wisdom--for Kerry--to pick Rendell as running mate.

[Dales]

Thanks for reminding me. I meant to add him, so now I have.

[daybreakcoming]

please add me to your ping list
you all are doing some awesome work here

[Dales]

The reasoning was given in Installment Eight.

I doubt it will remain in the slight Bush column.

[Dales]

I don't have an explanation for it. Coop's is probably the best I could come up with either. What I do know is that while in all of the Tri-state area, Bush had high ratings after 9/11. Then in Connecticut and New York, his support collapsed to where one would expect. But in New Jersey, as demonstrated by three polls by two polling companies with no history of Republican bias, his support has held.

So far.

[commish]

The battleground states last election were mainly in the south. Bush won them, and as such won the election. This time, the battleground states are predominantly in the midwest and the east coast

TO me this is the most tellng statement in your entire analysis. In 2000 the Battleground states were all states that BUsh won, now they are almost all safely Bush.

The states that are shaping up to be Battlegrounds states this election are all areas won by Gore. This is very important.

The Dems are not fighting to win Bush states, they are having to spend money and fight to keep states they won in 2000. This is very telling, and bodes very well for Bush.

Kerry cannot win unless he can take states from Bush, if his whole campaign is playing defense and protecting states Gore won -- then Bush has already won.

[Coop]

Another possibility just popped into my head. Pure speculation, but I wonder if these NJ numbers reflect any leftover anger/disgust with the whole Torricelli/Lautenburg election law violation? I don't recall any polling that significantly reflected such a thing back then, but who knows?

[Remole]

I see your point, but at this moment in the campaign the main domestic issue may well be the chronic loss of manufacturing jobs. And if Kerry chooses Rendell as running mate, that will be campaign issue # 1; and it will put these states won by Bush in 2000 in play: Ohio, WV, Kentucky, Tennessee, perhaps others. Plus it would solidify Penn, Mich, NJ, Missouri in the Dem camp, leaving them to spend money in (for them!) less secure states. Of all the potential VPs out there, Rendell is the one who offers the most benefit to a Kerry campaign.

[chimera]

Your analysis of NV fails to account for the unpopularity of the Yucca Mountain project, which Bush favors (correctly so). The Rats will hammer him with it. The Republican Senator has been forced against his better judgment to throw in his lot with the anti-Yucks, or risk committing political hiri kiri. I think the Rats pick off NV on this issue alone.

The NE will be solidly blue from MD northward. Kerry and the Rats are just too strong in these traditionally Rat states, and even those that have been Republican in the past have been trending Rat lately (e.g., NJ).

OR and NM will be close again, but don't discount the last-minute appearance of ballot boxes that will push the states over to the Rats (remember NM in 2000).

OH and WV will be the real battleground states this year. The job losses issue again. I can tell you as an observer "on the ground" in OH that both Kerry and Edwards have made recent appearances here and they talked about that almost exclusively, hammering Bush and Republicans mercilessly with it. The Rats smell blood in the water on this issue, and their going to feed the frenzy like nothing you've seen before. Bush better come up with a way to blunt this issue, or he's toast. The first thing is to tell "statistics" Snow and "stock market" Chao and "put some ice on that" Mankiw to STFU!

Bush had better pick up MN and maybe IA or get the ranch ready back in Crawford to move back into.

[commish]

OH no doubt, there is a ong way to go and any number of things can slide the battle from Dem states to Bush states. (rendell/ jobs issue is a good example). i was just going by Dales analysis of the current snapshot.

I am not advocating that we are safe by any means. The Dems will try anything, and I mean anything, to turn the tide in thier favor. if they thought a terror incident would help them I wouldn't put it past MCAwful and company to gen something up.

This is going to be a long close battle, and we cannot waver or flinch, but at the moment we have the lead and the ball. Time to work on the clock and look for the play to extend the lead.

[AntiGuv]

Four years ago today the Nasdaq was at 4550. Clearly not everyone has recovered all their losses from the previous three or so years, which are real losses since a great number of them obviously sold.

It always annoys me when people toss out personal anecdotes on the economy as if they are representative of anything besides themselves, when there are perfectly good statistics available from which to draw conclusions of general applicability.

No offense.

[Dales]

Obviously, I do not agree with your analysis. But as I generally say, time will tell!

[chimera]

It will that. There's time for Bush to try to dull the sharpness of the Rat attacks on the jobs issue if he starts speaking to it directly instead of through surrogates who shoot their feet off. People need to feel he's engaged on the issue, and not "disconnected" or "aloof", which was the knock the media and their Rat favorites put on Bush 41. I don't think there's time to turn the job situation around to the point of recovering everything that's been lost the last three years. That job creation estimate was just nonsense. But telling people to "put some ice on it" is not a winning political strategy.

[Neets]

Done

[Dales]

I don't think there's time to turn the job situation around to the point of recovering everything that's been lost the last three years.

Sure there is. I actually think it is likely that we will come very close to doing just that. However, it would not be smart politically for the Bush team to run around making the same prediction. It is smarter for them to just let things happen and take the credit when they do.

[AntiGuv]

I think Nevada will be near impossible for Bush unless he wins a national landslide anyhow.

First, there are new media reports starting just days ago that Yucca Mountain is unsafe, and the Democrats will harp on this nonstop between now and November. The threat of radioactive poisoning has a way of trumping all other political concerns on an election day..

Second, Harry Reid will probably glide to reelection having evaded any top-tier challengers, and it now appears likely that the NV-03 district will feature a vigorous campaign after all, with the Dems hammering on Bush in the district that the statewide vote swings on.

BTW, I think it will become swiftly apparent that West Virginia is a lost cause in 2004. The state is intensely Dem - occasional flukes notwithstanding - and the local Dem establishment will be galvanized to reclaim its EVs in 2004. It will not be ignored as a backwater like it was by Gore in 2000 and I expect the Dems to deliver their own.