I've lived in swpa for 26 years, and I am in Ohio often as well... I can tell you this about PA and OHIO.. If PA is within a few points when it has PHILLY hugely slanting its tilt left... Ohio is safe as can be. Without Philly, PA and OH are nearly identical in a lot of political aspects. Philly though is a huge slant left that PA has to deal with, easily 5 - 8 points of democratic slant overall. So if PA is polling with Obama at a lead of less than 5, Ohio is safely going to go to the Romney.
You could/can use a process of analysis to see that Romney was likely to win FL, VA, MO, IND and NC. Obama had the perfect storm of enthusiasm, a bad candidate on the other side, a MSM going crazy for him and the financial mess. With all THAT he barely won NC, IND and FL.
So with a bad economy, less motivation to vote and an opposition who WANTS to vote and Romney doing pretty well as a candidate, there was little logic to suggest Obama would win NC, IND and FL again. It also is a great indicator for VA, but there is the demographic change going on there and some questions about it changing. Still, Romney is a good candidate to take it back given his appeal to indies.
So I never understood the idea put forth that Obama was the favorite in FL and VA, and even had a prayer in NC. NC was a once in a generation perfect storm.....though admittedly it is changing due to demographics/migration....it isn’t changing THAT much yet.
So that puts everything back in the same old states of Ohio, Colorado, Nevada....with Iowa, Wisconsin and New Hampshire being Romney’s version of Obama winning Fl, Indiana and NC.