I have developed my own list of seven states that I feel are crucial to McCain’s chances. I think McCain MUST win the first five and he’ll need to win at least one of the last two. Here the list:
Florida
Ohio
Virginia
Colorado
Missouri
Nevada
New Hampshire
1) I feel solid in predicting McCain victories in Florida and Missouri. McCain leads by 2-6 points in Florida in the last four polls. He has only spent on national advertising while Obama has spent $6 million in local TV adds. I have faith in the state GOP after they turned out over a million more votes for Bush in 2004 than in 2000 (3,964,522 to 2,912,790). They also showed their strength in Charlie Crist’s victory in the 2006 governor’s race. This was a bad year for the GOP and Crist still won by over 330,000 votes. Not quite Bush’s 380,000 vote victory in 2004 but still very solid nonetheless. Crist won Jacksonville, Tampa, and Orlando and he still got 45% in Miami. It’s tailor-made for McCain. Seniors, Cubans, and the large military population in the panhandle are the back-bone of McCain’s coalition and those groups show up on Election Day. Missouri looks like it’ll be McCain country. He leads by between 5-10 points in the last three polls. Bush won Missouri by a larger margin in 2004 (196,000 votes) than in 2000 (78,000), telling me that high turnout should help McCain.
2) Ohio is going to be very close. I’m in Cincinnati and McCain’s advertising presence has definitely stepped up. He’s been all over the Olympics and on local morning radio. His radio ad about Obama, taxes, and gas prices is brutally effective, IMO. He should run it nationwide. Rasmussen has McCain ahead and they’ve had him ahead since February. I worry about the turnout machine Obama is trying to build, although historically higher black turnout normally leads to higher white turnout. Obama also underperformed in the Ohio primary. He lost to Hillary in the southern and west central parts of the state. Primarily white, working class voters and McCain is going to steal a bunch of them.
3) These are very positive numbers in NH and I suspect Obama is vulnerable against McCain. His support was softer than I expected. Another factor to consider is Obama’s surprise loss against Hillary in the primary. This is the only state in my list that doesn’t have a large minority population of any sort. Almost all the undecideds broke for Hillary and only the Yuppies voted for Obama. Hillary won the working class and McCain can steal a large percentage of those votes.
4) It was good to see McCain surge ahead in Colorado’s last three polls after trailing for months. The same goes for Virginia after McCain had been trailing slightly in June and July. In the other western state in contention, Nevada, McCain leads narrowly, although I worry more about voter fraud in Las Vegas than any other place in the country, even Detroit and Philly.
5) Iowa and New Mexico I anticipate will go to Obama unless he completely falls apart. Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania are outside possibilities for McCain, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Obama will make a push to flip Indiana and North Carolina, but I doubt he’ll pull it off. I’m not buying the polls showing Obama in contention in places like Alaska and North Dakota and Montana.
McCain doesn't have much margin for error. If he loses any of the first five, his odds of becoming POTUS are very slim.
The good news is that all of those states are very winnable if he continues running a strong, smart campaign. I'd rather be in McCain's position than Obambi's right now.