Obama Election Watch

With Obama riding high in the polls, many pundits have written off John McCain’s chances of winning the presidential election. But in American politics, four weeks can be an eternity. Only four weeks ago, John McCain had a lead in most national polls.

McCain has pulled out of Michigan, once thought to be his best chance of picking up a blue state that had been won by John Kerry in 2004. McCain continues to spend a pile of money on television advertising in Pennsylvania. He visited the state with Sarah Palin on Wednesday. But most polls in Pennsylvania show that Obama now has a double-digit lead.

It seems likely that all the blue states in 2004 will remain blue in 2008. This gives Obama a solid base of 252 electoral votes. Also, it appears that Obama may win the states of Iowa and New Mexico, two red states in 2004. This would give Obama 264 electoral votes, only six short of the total needed to win the presidency. (Click Here to Read More)

To keep Wisconsin in the Democratic column this November, Obama needs to generate more black voters in Milwaukee. He must forcefully cite the Bush-McCain economy to appeal to working-class white voters in industrial cities. Finally, he needs to hold the traditional rural Democratic counties in the southwestern part of the state.

Wisconsin has been in the Democratic column in every election since the Reagan landslide of 1984. So one might ask, why should Obama worry about this Democratic stronghold? The reason is that Democratic presidential candidates have consistently won in Wisconsin by only razor-thin margins. And polls this year show that Wisconsin remains a key battleground state.

This past summer, polls showed Obama with a double-digit lead in Wisconsin. But voters in the state appear to have responded to McCain’s maverick message of reform. Also, the nomination of Sarah Palin as his vice presidential candidate has given a major boost to the GOP ticket in Wisconsin. Palin’s own image as a working woman and a hockey mom has solid appeal in many areas of Wisconsin. Recent polls in Wisconsin show that the race is now close. (Click Here to Read More)

There are nearly a half million eligible black voters in the state of Missouri. The vast majority of them are in the St. Louis or Kansas City metropolitan areas. In Missouri, more than 150,000 of the eligible black voters have not registered to vote.

A solid increase in the black vote in St. Louis and Kansas City would give an important boost to Obama’s chances of taking Missouri’s 11 electoral votes. To energize more black voters the Obama campaign can call on the standard measures of placing voter registration and issue-oriented advertising in black newspapers and on black radio stations in both St. Louis and Kansas City. In an effort to increase black voter turnout, Obama can almost surely count on a horde of eager volunteers at University of Missouri campuses in St. Louis and Kansas City. Also large numbers of students at Washington University, Saint Louis University, and historically black Harris-Stowe State University in St. Louis need to be enlisted to volunteer in getting out the black vote.

But increasing the black vote alone will not do the trick. (Click Here to Read More)

John McCain recently sent out a clear signal of his support for efforts to divert water from Colorado to his home state of Arizona. This was a revolutionary statement. It is also a clear political windfall for Obama.

The water resource story in the western states is direct and easily understood. The Obama campaign staff must use the Colorado media to make certain that over the next two months voters are constantly reminded of the serious harm McCain aims to bring to the state of Colorado regarding its water needs. (Click Here to Read More)

UPDATE (September 11, 2008): The Federal Highway Administration has rejected Governor Ed Rendell’s plan for placing tolls on Interstate 80. The ruling stated simply that there was a lack of sufficient traffic and revenue  studies for the plan to be approved. Therefore, the plan to place tolls on I-80 may resurface at some point in the future. When he visits certain areas in Pennsylvania during the campaign Obama might still consider stating that if he is elected president, he would oppose any plan to place tolls on the highway.

Here OEW mentions a high-risk campaign strategy that Democratic professionals are likely to reject out of hand. Yet Obama could win a large number of Pennsylvania votes by backing a bread-and-butter issue that is pressing on the minds of millions of voters in the state.

Some critics of Obama’s campaign strategy have accused the Democratic standard-bearer of excessive targeting of traditional GOP states while neglecting his base. Polls in blue states such as Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Michigan, to name a few, show that Obama has yet to close the deal in these electoral vote rich states.

One of the most important states for Obama to win is Pennsylvania and its large bloc of 21 electoral votes. Last week vice presidential nominee Joe Biden put the issue bluntly: “We cannot win without winning Pennsylvania.”

Obama is strong in Philadelphia, aided by a solid bloc of black voters. He can count on a smaller, but similar, bloc in Pittsburgh.

But Obama is weak in the central and western portions of the state that are largely rural and mostly white. In this spring’s Democratic primary Hillary Clinton trounced Obama in many counties in these areas. In Luzerne County, which includes many rural areas as well as the city of Wilkes-Barre, Clinton defeated Obama with more than 74 percent of the vote. In Butler, Clarion, Lawrence, Jefferson, Clearfield, Armstrong, and several other counties in central and western Pennsylvania, Clinton outpolled Obama by margins of 2 to 1 or more.

These counties where Obama fared poorly in the Democratic primary lie along the Interstate 80 corridor. This highway runs 311 miles from the Delaware Water Gap in the east to the Ohio border in the west. Most of this long stretch of highway goes through beautiful rolling hills and majestic valleys. These areas are sparsely populated. Voters along the I-80 corridor are almost exclusively white, older than the general population, conservative, and working-class. These are precisely the voters with whom Obama has had trouble making a good connection. (Click Here to Read More)

In 2000 the outcome of the entire presidential election hinged on the results in Florida. In 2004 Ohio was the pivotal state. This year it may be Virginia.

While many states remain close, if one looks at the states won by George Bush in 2004 it appears that only Iowa and New Mexico are safe bets to swing to Obama this November. If all the other states vote as they did in 2004 McCain would win the election by a margin of 274-264 electoral votes.

This means that Obama needs to win all the states won by John Kerry, add Iowa and New Mexico, plus pick up one more state with at least six electoral votes. Once again, either Ohio or Florida could provide the margin of victory, but pre-convention polls showed both of these states may be trending toward McCain.

It looks as if Obama’s best shot for the one additional state he needs is Virginia. Polls in Virginia currently show the race tied. But this could lead to unwarranted optimism for Barack Obama. Remember that African-American candidate Douglass Wilder had a double-digit lead in polls taken immediately prior to the 1989 gubernatorial election in Virginia. Yet Wilder won by only 7,000 votes. So there still is a lot of work to do to secure Virginia’s 13 electoral votes for Obama. (Click Here to Read More)

In this year’s presidential contest, both John McCain and Barack Obama are targeting Colorado and its nine electoral votes. Traditionally a GOP stronghold, now Colorado has become a battleground state. In recent years Democrats have met with good success in statewide elections.

A major reason for this transformation in Colorado politics is the large influx of Hispanic voters. Hispanic-American citizens, who tend to vote Democratic, now make up more than 12 percent of Colorado’s voting-age population. There are four times as many Hispanic voters in Colorado than there are black voters.

John McCain recently handed Barack Obama a political gift when he supported a voter initiative that proposed to ban affirmative action admissions and scholarship benefits for young Latino students. One such initiative will appear on the ballot in Colorado this November. (Click Here to Read More)

Most people think that New Hampshire doesn’t count much in presidential elections. Think again. Razor-thin margins in small states sometimes control elections. Had Al Gore won the state of New Hampshire in 2000, he would have been elected president.

Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania are the heavy-hitting so-called blue states most often mentioned as the ones where Barack Obama must apply campaign funds and organizational muscle to defend traditional Democratic turf. True, the loss of any of these heavily populated states will make it difficult for Obama to amass the 270 electoral votes necessary to win the White House.

There is an obvious tendency to think that scarcely populated New Hampshire with four electoral votes won’t have much effect on the final November outcome. But in a very close Electoral College count, tiny New Hampshire could swing the election to one candidate or the other. Had Al Gore won the state of New Hampshire in 2000, he would have been elected president.

New Hampshire holds some special problems for Obama. It is almost entirely white. Unlike many states there is no base of black or Latino voters to help him build a winning coalition of voters. Also, the state has been very good to John McCain. McCain won the New Hampshire GOP presidential primary in both 2000 and 2008. This year a win in New Hampshire jump-started a McCain campaign that many observers had given up for dead. Many New Hampshire voters identify McCain as an independent and a maverick, which fits right into New Hampshire’s view of its own political identity. (Click Here to Read More)

In the 2004 presidential election Iowa went to the GOP by a mere 10,000 votes. That year there were 20,000 blacks in Iowa who did not bother to vote. A razor-thin margin is likely to settle the outcome in Iowa this November. For this reason the turnout of the black vote for Obama could be decisive.

The first constitution of the state of Iowa, which was ratified in 1846, required blacks to post a $500 bond before they could enter the state. Blacks who lived in Iowa could not vote, hold public office, attend public schools, or marry whites.

Today, the vestiges of Jim Crow remain. Most Americans do not realize that blacks make up a greater percentage of the prison population in Iowa compared to its overall population than is the case in any state in the union. In Iowa, the percentage of blacks suspended or expelled from school compared to the overall student population is among the highest in the nation. To most Americans this evidence of an antiblack environment in Iowa seems odd since in the January Democratic caucuses, huge numbers of whites turned out to vote for Obama rather than for Hillary Clinton. Nevertheless, statistics suggest that Iowa has not been a hospitable place for black Americans. (Click Here to Read More)

At this point, it appears that the vote in the Electoral College could be extremely close. There are even some scenarios where a 269-269 tie could occur.

Under these circumstances, every state and every electoral vote is important.

In 48 of the 50 states, the candidate who wins a plurality of the popular vote is awarded all of the particular state’s electoral votes. But in Nebraska and Maine, the winner of the popular vote statewide gets two electoral votes and the winner of the popular vote in each congressional district is awarded one electoral vote. (Click Here to Read More)