Battleground: Back to the 2004 map?
Posted: Wednesday, September 10, 2008 9:12 AM by Domenico Montanaro
The Wall Street Journal has a good tally to illustrate that the Obama campaign, once proud to tout the diversity of unconventional states it hoped to put in play, is buckling down in traditional swing battlegrounds. "A campaign that visited nine states in mid-August has focused almost exclusively on three this month. Since closing out the convention, Sen. Obama will have held 21 campaign events through Tuesday, 18 of them in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan. "
THE WEST: Team Obama is redeploying volunteers in Texas into nearby battleground states Colorado and New Mexico. "Last spring, Barack Obama promised to help Texas Democrats try to win legislative seats and down-ballot races, even though he was considered unlikely to carry the Lone Star State. But with less than two months before the Nov. 4 election, Mr. Obama is sending Texas volunteers to battleground states, placing less emphasis on campaigning inside the state."
The New York Times notes the influence of early voting in western battleground states. "Early voting is a relatively new phenomenon in American politics, and its influence varies widely by region. But significantly, Southwest states that have emerged as McCain-Obama battlegrounds this year -- Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico -- are hotbeds of early voting, as is Florida, where one million people have already requested a ballot. But early voting is far less prevalent in contested Eastern states like New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Virginia."
FLORIDA: Another potential problem at the polls to look out for going into November. Florida's Secretary of State says he intends to enforce a law that would prevent voters whose ID doesn't match existing records from registering to vote. Opponents say the controversial measure will disenfranchise voters.
GEORGIA: Georgia Republicans have enjoyed poking fun at the Obama campaign's expenditure of more than $2 million of television advertising in the state after it confirmed yesterday that it will move some of its staffers to nearby North Carolina, an implicit acknowledgement that its hopes of turning the Peach State blue may have been overly optimistic. "Campaign officials declined to specify how many of approximately 75 paid Obama staffers will be redeployed, and denied that the move signaled reduced expectations in the state."
MICHIGAN: Susan Rice, one of the female surrogates deployed by Team Obama in the wake of the Sarah Palin veep nomination, told an audience of Michigan women, "If we don't win Michigan, it's going to be hard to put together 270 electoral votes."
MISSOURI: Newsweek takes a look at Obama's chances in the Show-Me State, where John Kerry's promises to "show George Bush the door" in 2004 earned him a loss by more than seven points.
NEW MEXICO: Readers of the Albuquerque Journal's online edition are already being asked to vote in an online poll: "Sarah Palin: Enough Already? Or Do you Still Want More Coverage?"
OHIO: Remember that Sick Days ballot initiative in Ohio? While you were convention-ing, SEIU agreed to strip it from the Ohio ballot, much to the relief of Democrats in the state who found themselves at odds with business interests and their own governor by supporting it.
