Will the Hoosier State be a legitimate swing state this year? Barack Obama has included the historically GOP state in his first round of states receiving his first 60 second general election ad of the campaign, and he’s also assigned one of his top staffers to the state. Larry Sabato thinks this is all a big mind game designed to mess with the minds of camp McCain. What’s your take?
In other Indiana news, GOP wunderkind Jon Elrod has quit his congressional campaign against Rep. Andre Carson, and local Republicans are grasping at straws to find a replacement candidate. More in the diaries here and here.
It’s definitely Republican-leaning, but as far as it’s culture goes it’s not all that much different from Ohio and Missouri (both are treated as swing-states). It also has to be considered that Obama is from neighboring Illinois, so that, at the very least, should justify spending something there. I suspect that Obama won’t win Indiana, but I believe he does have a legitimate chance of winning the state.
He’s not likely to win the state, but that doesn’t make it a head fake to play in the widest field possible.
I don’t know, haven’t all the polls that have been coming out of Indiana been fairly close? Its seems as the all the states he decided to advertise in have had polls showing him semi-competitive. My best guess is he’s trying to see what improvements he can make on those reasonable polls and see if he can’t improve on them. This is probably the first wave, and the states that respond positively will probably move on to round two. lol
Only four are states John Kerry won in 2004. Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, and Michigan.
John Kerry won Pennsylvania by three points, Wisconsin by one point, New Hampshire by one point, Michigan by three points.
Small margins in all four of those states. Wisconsin has no significant downticket races, other than picking up our state assembly, New Hampshire has a congressional race and a senate race worth watching, Michigan has two competitive congressional races, Pennsylvania has a couple of possibly competitive house races. So I doubt the barometer is significantly tied to downballot effect. I wish he would have added Mississippi and Louisiana to the list, if I had a say in it.
What else does this tell us? He’s shooting for an electoral blowout. This tells us he is confident he will win California, Hawai’i, Washington, Oregon, Minnesota, Illinois, Maryland, DC, Deleware, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, and Maine for a total of 200 electoral votes.
If you add all 18 states from his list, that’s 199 more electoral votes, for a 399-139 blowout. I doubt Georgia will flip this election, so if you switch Georgia red, that’s still a 384-154 blowout.
Or it’s just a matter of making the map so big, that McCain can’t defend himself. All Obama needs is 70 EV’s out of 199. John McCain needs 131 of that 199 to win. Well, if Obama contests every state in that pool, John McCain is toast.
I think it is “lean Republican” but Obama can make a fight for it. Sure, it has gone Republican in presidential elections for years, but when is the last time a Democrat tried to win there?
Uphill? Sure? But look how Indiana went in 2006. We gained three seats. And look at the Indiana polls. There are none since the May 2 primary, but three in April are Obama by 8; McCain by 8 and Obama by 1. Real Clear Politics It seems possible.
Jon Elrod dropping out of the IN-7 race is good news for the us in the GOP.
We cant win this race, it was only close as a protest vote against the late Congresswoman Carson in 2006. We didnt even come close in the special.
Elrod represents a heavy Democratic seat in the IN House, and we need him to try and keep that seat in GOP hands, and build up our numbers for re-districting coming up.
You head fake by spending money on ads, not by “wasting” the valuable skills of a key staffer.
Their internal polling must be showing them that something is there.
and to show you just what a rank AMATEUR elrod is, he did not cite illness or family issues or any of the “typical” excuses for withdrawal(which sometimes are actually valid; most of the time they are hocum political excuses); he stated PUBLICLY that he could not win; this guy is finished
has internal polls telling him that he is competitive in all these states.
must have been out partying with jere; we have been discussing this poll in other threads since last night; come on guys…………………..we need your input