Rocky Mountain high
Sunday, August 24, 2008 at 11:10AM Since about February, I've been assuming -- like most talking heads -- that Obama would pick up three key red states: Nevada, New Mexico, and Colorado.
For months, the polls favored Obama, and when combined with key demographic trends over the past four years, it seemed like a near impossibility for McCain to "hold" those states.
Time to revisit that thinking. According to a new Mason-Dixon poll, McCain is only down three points in Colorado (after trailing by double digits for months), and has a four point lead in New Mexico and a seven point lead in Nevada.
Wow. If those numbers are correct, this could dramatically change the electoral math. I had been assuming that Obama was going to win all three, and that McCain would have to make up the difference by winning either Michigan or Pennsylvania, two traditionally blue states. And I've been saying all along that should Obama add Virginia to the three western states, it would be game, set, match -- no way McCain could make it work.
But if McCain holds just two of those three states -- say Nevada and New Mexico -- then he could afford to lose Virginia should he win either Michigan or Pennsylvania, which right now seems very doable. There are still some other key red states that McCain needs to hold -- Missouri, Iowa, Florida and Ohio -- but the polls in those states show him ahead at the moment.
To make matters more confusing, add other variable to the calculus: should McCain pick Mitt Romney as his Veep, it could help him in two of these key states, Michigan and Nevada. Romney is from Michigan, and performed well there in the primary, and he trounced McCain in Nevada, where there is a large Mormon population. It only strengthen's the case for Romney on the ticket.
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