The swing states of 2008

Salon asks a round table of experts to predict where the presidential election will be won or lost. It's not just about Ohio anymore.

Editor's note: Listen to a podcast of this round table here. Read Paul Maslin's article "How Will Barack Obama Get to 270?" here.

By Thomas F. Schaller

Read more: Democratic Party, Colorado, Florida, Politics, Iowa, News, Georgia, New Mexico, Virginia, New Hampshire, Michigan, Ohio, Barack Obama, 2008 election, Thomas F. Schaller

June 24, 2008 |

The presidential elections of 2000 and 2004 were unique in American history in how little changed on the electoral map. States that were red in 2000 stayed red four years later, and states that were blue remained blue. Only three states changed hands. Will 2008 be more of the same, or will the candidacy of Barack Obama transform the map? Which states will prove crucial to the outcome? We asked a panel of analysts to give us their short lists of swing states for November. Frequent Salon contributor Tom Schaller agreed to moderate the round table. Participants include Democratic pollster Paul Maslin, co-founder and principal of Fairbanks, Maslin, Maullin & Associates, who was Howard Dean's pollster in 2004 and worked for Bill Richardson this cycle, and who wrote on a similar subject for Salon in May; Andres Ramirez, who is vice president for Hispanic Programs and director of the Hispanic Strategy Center at the progressive think tank NDN; and conservative blogger Ross Douthat, who is a senior editor at the Atlantic. --Mark Schone

Tom Schaller: We have our two nominees now and people are starting to look at the electoral map again very closely. We have had the two most stable presidential elections back-to-back in American history. Only three states changed colors from red to blue or blue to red between 2000 and 2004, those being New Mexico and Iowa and New Hampshire. That's the fewest states to change in back-to-back presidential elections since George Washington ran the table twice in the first two elections and there wasn't popular voting. But a lot of pundits and analysts and the candidates themselves are talking about a looser, more open map. So that's where we're going to start this conversation today. I would like to ask each of our participants to give us a general sense of what parts of the map look most intriguing to them in terms of where either Obama or McCain will be on offense and/or on defense. Ross Douthat: There's sort of an emerging conventional wisdom on this front, but I think the conventional wisdom is correct, which is always helpful. Basically, the idea being that McCain has the best chance to expand the Republican map in the eastern Rust Belt, in states like Pennsylvania and Michigan. Those are probably the places that he has the best chance to pick off a state that went blue last time around. And then Obama seems to have more potential options and we're still looking at the polling data to see how stuff shakes out. But he's clearly going to run stronger than Kerry and Gore did in the old Northwest -- by which I mean the Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa area. And I think that means that Minnesota and Wisconsin, which both went for Kerry last time but were very competitive, will be less competitive this time. And Iowa, which went for Bush last time, will almost certainly flip. There's been some loose talk about that pattern extending westward in the Plains states -- that seems less likely than that Obama will do better in the Southwestern region. New Mexico, obviously not Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, states like that. There's also Virginia, where Obama did tremendously well in the primary against Hillary Clinton, did very well in the suburbs of Northern Virginia, which have been trending Democratic for a while. That's how I see things shaping up. Paul Maslin: I'll talk about Virginia later, which is clearly in play. I look at three troikas here: the Southwest, mountain desert states that were just mentioned -- clearly, I think one of these candidates is going to wake up the day after and say, "What happened?" because they both have opportunities in Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico. It could be a sweep for either side. But that's going to be a place where McCain and Obama both go all out. [Then w]hat I'll call the flood plain -- again just mentioned. I wouldn't say yet that the Republicans are just going to give up. They have a convention in Minnesota, they're going to make a major effort in Wisconsin, which has been decided, where I live, by less than 10,000 votes two times in a row. I agree that Iowa has a good chance of changing. But those three states are going to be battled over. And then coming east to where I think, ultimately, John McCain's hopes will either rise or fall, and that is in the three industrial states of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan. Republicans have always viewed Ohio as their critical, have-to-win state -- in fact, no Republican has ever won the presidency in recent years without winning Ohio. But I do think McCain and the Republicans perceive an opportunity in either Michigan or Pennsylvania. They're going to make a major effort in both states. They may be in a situation where they have to break through in one of them to get to 270 electoral votes. And if Obama can hold two of those three states, and certainly all three, but if he can hold two of those three states, there may be enough pickup elsewhere for the Democrats to win this thing. Andres Ramirez: I'm based out of Nevada, Las Vegas. I certainly think that the movement that we're seeing out in the Southwest and the DNC's and the Democratic Party's efforts to make the Western region much more competitive by putting the DNC convention in Colorado, adding Nevada to the early calendar -- we've seen a lot of movement. So I think that in terms of states that will likely flip and change, we will see some tremendous movement, at least in Nevada and New Mexico. Colorado will be a lot tougher. But it still has a likelihood of moving over to the Obama camp. I also think that one of the states that Bush picked up in 2004, Virginia, will switch. If you look at the Quinnipiac poll that was released early this week, Florida is going to be much more in play and much more advantageous for Obama than many people had been assuming. Schaller: We've covered quite a bit of territory there. Let's take a look at six states in particular that come from all parts of the country. They are Colorado in the Mountain West or Southwest, depending on how you define it; New Hampshire in the Northeast; Virginia, which has already been mentioned several times, in the border or rim South; Georgia, a Deep South state that some people actually think will be in play; Ohio, from the traditional Rust Belt area; and Michigan, a state where John McCain seems to be doing better than expected. Anyone want to take a shot at any or all of those states, or a couple of them and talk about what specifically is putting them into play and where the risks and opportunities are for either candidate?

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