So much for suspense

[Trajan12]

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2008/10/20/mccain_giving_up_on_colorado.html

http://thepage.time.com/john-king-on-cnn/

So, speculation that McCain is giving up on Iowa, New Mexico, and Colorado now. I don't know if this is completely true, so I'm just going to give my analysis just in case.

I've always though the most likely scenario for an Obama win would be Obama carrying all Kerry states including Iowa, New Mexico, and Colorado to make up the difference of not having Ohio and Florida. This would mean a win with 273 EVs.

Michigan and Pennsylvania, the two Kerry states we all fretted might not be too keen on Obama, Rasmussen has Obama up by about 16 in each. In Michigan, McCain has even ceased campaigning. Both are lost causes at this point in the game.

IA and NM have been locked blue for the entire GE campaign. Leaving CO the weakest link in this raodmap to victory. Now, if this news is true, and McCain is pulling out of CO, it just may seal his fate. If Obama carries all the lue states plus IA, NM, and CO, he wins no matter which way the other states go.

McCain's supposed new strategy is to focus on playing catchup in NC, VA,, NV, and trying to swing PA. PA, as the polls show, is extremely unlikely to swing by double digits to come back in play for McCain barring something outrageous being revealed between now and Nov. But according to this new strategy, PA would be integral to the McCain camp's win. After abandoning CO, PA is a must win. But the fact is, PA is not a likely win by any stretch.

But, this new strategy may be all McCain has. Polls have Obama up in MO, VA, and NC. states McCain has to win. But even if he does win those, he still can't win if he doesn't campaign in CO. His campaign is probably coming to the realization that they can't play everywhere on the map with 50 mil like Obama can with his hundreds of millions. But McCain may have actually had a chance in CO, withdrawing from there would be senseless.

In short, McCain already has few avennues to victory. And the decisions his camp are making are artifically reducing them even further.

 

[Godwynn]

Swing Pennsylvania?

Ouchies.

 

[mangxema]

I'm starting to feel bad for him.

 

[AngryZealot]

Polls are starting to show Georgia within 5 points as well. Though there's probably not enough time for Obama to flip it, it's still kind of stunning.

 

[JeffIllinois]

Yeah, this is McCain's last Hail Mary. He is putting all his chips on PA. He better hope they have DeBolt machines there.

 

[mangxema]

Polls are starting to show Georgia within 5 points as well. Though there's probably not enough time for Obama to flip it, it's still kind of stunning.

Georgia will be interesting. The one thing the polls haven't accounted for is Barr, who is from one of Georgia's conservative districts. I don't think it will actually turn blue, but I think it could surprise a lot of people.

 

[Godwynn]

Georgia will be interesting. The one thing the polls haven't accounted for is Barr, who is from one of Georgia's conservative districts. I don't think it will actually turn blue, but I think it could surprise a lot of people.

Are you voting this year?

 

[mangxema]

Yep. First time. Missed the 2004 election by three months. Man, was I pissed. Oh well, Bush won Georgia handily so it's not like it really matters.

 

[Elta]

McCain's supposed new strategy is to focus on playing catchup in NC, VA,, NV, and trying to swing PA.

I would be hyper surprised if McCain won in Nevada: The *polling at 7-11 tells it all.




* I wonder how many of you are going to get that reference

 

[Luckymoose]

If Georgia goes blue I will move to Texas again.

 

[CaptainF]

Ironic how even though Oregon is as true blue as it gets (and has been for as long as I can remember), I live in the most die hard conservative area in the state. McCain-Palin signs in droves.

 

[Mr. Dictator]

Ironic how even though Oregon is as true blue as it gets (and has been for as long as I can remember), I live in the most die hard conservative area in the state. McCain-Palin signs in droves.

i'd always heard oregon was red as hell, just portland and the surrounding areas are blue, swinging the entire state blue due to no population worth mentioning in the backwards parts of the state...

 

[Aramazd]

i'd always heard oregon was red as hell, just portland and the surrounding areas are blue, swinging the entire state blue due to no population worth mentioning in the backwards parts of the state...

Yeah, that's the truth. It's the same here in California. The conservatives cover more area, but there are less of them.

 

[Nylan]

My hometown is a as close to a libertarian stronghold as I've seen in Florida.

 

[Left]

i'd always heard oregon was red as hell, just portland and the surrounding areas are blue, swinging the entire state blue due to no population worth mentioning in the backwards parts of the state...

Yeah the Willamette Vally is quite red, except for Eugene and maybe Salem.

 

[GenMarshall]

If Georgia goes blue I will move to Texas again.

Democrats and Liberals said they would move to Canada in mass droves if Bush won a second term. Yet it didint happened.

 

[CaptainF]

i'd always heard oregon was red as hell, just portland and the surrounding areas are blue, swinging the entire state blue due to no population worth mentioning in the backwards parts of the state...

Oregon is a pretty mixed bag. The Portland and Eugene metro areas are very very very liberal, as well as Ashland and Southern Oregon in general. However, Eastern Oregon and much of the rural parts of the state are quite conservative. I live about an hours drive away from Eugene and 2 hours drive from Portland, in this county:

Spoiler :

I read this interesting report which sums up how crazy this state is:

Spoiler :

Democrats like to pretend that Oregon, like Wisconsin, isn't really a swing state because they've usually managed to win it in the end. But a swing state it is -- Al Gore won there by less than 7,000 votes, and John Kerry improved on those numbers, but not by much. And yet Oregon also has a reputation for being extremely progressive: people think of its assisted suicide law or its decriminalization of marijuana, or the bohemian atmosphere of Portland, and naturally enough come to that conclusion. How to reconcile these two things?

There are two ways to be a swing state. One is to have a lot of moderates. That doesn't really describe Oregon; a moderate state like Ohio would never pass an assisted suicide law. The other way is to have both a lot of conservatives and a lot of liberals, who happen to roughly balance one another out. Oregon is one such state.

Exit polls from 2004 contain a basic question about the ideology (conservative/liberal/moderate) of each voter. We can apply a Likert scale to these responses, assigning 10 points to every liberal, 5 to every moderate, and 0 to every conservative. We will call this result a Liberalness Score. The average voter in Oregon has a Liberalness Score of 4.65, which ties it with Minnesota as the 13th most liberal state in the country. (Massachusetts is the most liberal state at 5.65, and Utah the most conservative at 3.30. Note that only a handful of states have a rating above 5 -- that is, have more self-identified liberals than conservatives.)

But here's where it gets interesting. The average Kerry voter nationwide had a Liberalness Score of 6.20 -- just slightly left of center. However, in Oregon, the average Kerry voter was a 7.17. This, as it happens, is the highest score in the country; the Kerry voters in Oregon were more liberal than the ones in Vermont (7.11) or even the District of Columbia (6.97).

Meanwhile, the average Bush voter nationwide had a Liberalness Score of 2.58 -- pretty darn conservative. But in Oregon, the average Bush voter was a 2.01 -- very conservative. And guess what? That is the lowest Liberalness Score for Bush voters anywhere in the country. The Bush voters in Oregon were as conservative as the ones in Tennessee (2.02) or Utah (2.15).

So the liberals in Oregon are as liberal as any in the country, whereas the conservatives are as conservative as any in the country. This is how you wind up with the weird political soup wherein Oregon has decriminalized marijuana but has also passed a gay marriage ban, or how it allows assisted suicide but also has one of the nation's lowest effective tax rates.

Overall, I kind of like the polarity...it's either hippies or logger rednecks here...pretty cool!

 

[silver 2039]

Democrats and Liberals said they would move to Canada in mass droves if Bush won a second term. Yet it didint happened.

I fled to India.

 

[Ecofarm]

You mean you avoided getting outsourced. There's no "fleeing" from the first world.

I was promised US refugee camps in Canada and Sweden when Bush won. Well? This place is still crawling with marxist wannabe intellectuals.

 

[mangxema]

My hometown is a as close to a libertarian stronghold as I've seen in Florida.

Where is that?