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Obama, McCain expected to come down to swing states

BY REID J. EPSTEIN | reid.epstein@newsday.com
September 21, 2008

For all the preconvention talk that Barack Obama and John McCain would reinvent the electoral map and put in play up to a dozen states that were ignored in the last two presidential elections, experts now say the campaign may well come down to the same swing states that twice sent George W. Bush to the White House.

With 44 days remaining before Election Day, the candidates are spending a preponderance of their time, money and energy in no more than 10 states, with each campaign making daily calculations on which states can get them to the 270 electoral votes necessary to win the White House.

Among the biggest prizes are traditional swing states including Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Florida and Missouri, along with the newly in-play Western states of Colorado and Nevada. Iowa, New Hampshire and New Mexico are also in contention.

A newcomer to the mix, Virginia, is a toss-up state this year in part because of a population boom in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, where moderate urban voters are moving in large numbers. While Virginia hasn't gone for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1964, the state elected a Democratic governor in 2005 and sent Democrat Jim Webb to the Senate in 2006.

"You can pretty well track the battleground states by where [Obama and McCain are] going," said Merle Black, an Emory University political science professor. "They're really camping out in a small number of states."

According to experts, Obama at this point faces a difficult task.

Assuming he wins all the states that Democrat John Kerry took in the last election, Obama also will be looking to pick up either Ohio or Virginia to reach 270 electoral votes. If he does not, he could be facing the need to take Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico - toss-ups Bush won four years ago.

McCain, however, needs to hold the states Bush won in 2004. If he can take either Michigan or Pennsylvania - both Democratic states in 2004 - he will force Obama to win a state like Florida or Ohio, said Charles Franklin, a political-science professor at the University of Wisconsin and co-developer of pollster.com, a polling analysis site.

According to an analysis of candidate spending in local TV markets by the Wisconsin Advertising Project, Obama and McCain are concentrating their television advertising in a handful of states. More than half the campaigns' post-convention TV advertising budgets have gone to just 10 states so far, the study found.

Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia political science professor, said both candidates are tailoring their message to Midwestern and Western audiences. He predicted little movement in the polls in toss-up states until after the debates, the first of which takes place Friday at the University of Mississippi in Oxford.

"We'll see how people interpret the debates," Sabato said. "That could easily swing one or two of those key toss-ups."

The campaigns still maintain that their candidates will compete across the map.

Obama backers say they still harbor hopes of winning in North Carolina and Montana, while McCain supporters were buoyed by a Siena poll last week showing McCain within 5 percentage points of Obama in New York. The same poll showed McCain leading Obama on Long Island, 44 percent to 39 percent.

Upsets in New York, North Carolina or Montana are most unlikely unless the race turns into a blowout.

Suffolk County Legis. Jon Cooper (D-Lloyd Harbor), who heads Obama's campaign on Long Island, said the Illinois senator has to win the Keystone State. "If we don't win Pennsylvania, then you've got to win a mix of these other states," said Cooper, who nonetheless predicted an Obama victory in Pennsylvania.

McCain's top local surrogate, Mineola attorney Grant Lally, said Florida and Ohio are the Arizona senator's essential states. "I think those are bedrock states for his victory in this election," Lally said.

Franklin said the states to watch are the ones in which McCain and Obama have traded leads in the polls, the biggest of which are Ohio and Virginia, which he said are critical for both candidates.

"If Obama loses both Ohio and Virginia," he said, "I don't see any set [of states] that he's currently close in that would make up the electoral votes to win."

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