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Turf war begins for key US states
This week's lipstick brawl has masked the red-hot intensity of a shrinking presidential campaign battlefield as a flurry of post-convention polls show Republican John McCain starting to move ahead of Democrat Barack Obama for the first time nationally and gaining ground in key states.
- New York Times
- Published: 22:59 September 12, 2008
Fairfax: This week's lipstick brawl has masked the red-hot intensity of a shrinking presidential campaign battlefield as a flurry of post-convention polls show Republican John McCain starting to move ahead of Democrat Barack Obama for the first time nationally and gaining ground in key states.
McCain and Obama invaded each other's turf in this battleground state this week, and McCain used his running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, to draw his biggest crowd yet - estimated by local officials at 23,000 and heavily suburban and female - to Fairfax.
Obama, in Norfolk on the same day, charged that his opponent's campaign was using "lies and phony outrage and swift-boat politics" in claiming he had used a sexist comment against Palin.
McCain has acknowledged that he cannot afford to lose this bosom of the old Confederacy, now an increasingly Democratic state and a prime Obama target but also home to the Pentagon and the world's largest naval base.
The last time a Democratic presidential candidate won Virginia was in 1964. New polls put McCain ahead by 2 to 4 points.
The fundamental aim of both campaigns is to hold the states that their parties won in 2004.
Winning numbers
For McCain, that achievement would put him in the White House, since Republican President Bush defeated Democratic Senator John Kerry by 286 to 252 electoral votes. A victory for Obama would require that he hold the Kerry states and add 18 electoral votes to get to 270, the winning threshold.
But as the race has tightened, Obama has abandoned his ambitious 50-state strategy and is pouring energy into playing defence in Pennsylvania and Michigan.
Georgia, once considered within Obama's reach, now shows McCain 18 points ahead. New state polls show problems that are more pressing for Obama: His lead in Pennsylvania has slipped to within 2 to 3 points and in Michigan to 1 to 4 points.
About 10 states are now considered battlegrounds, and some Electoral College experts say the race actually boils down to just three: Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Both men need to win two out of those three, said Daron Shaw, a University of Texas political scientist who worked on the Bush campaigns in 2000 and 2004.
If McCain holds Ohio and picks off Michigan, with 17 electoral votes, or Pennsylvania, with 21, he wins, regardless of whether Obama wins in smaller Bush states where he has a comfortable lead, such as Iowa, with 7 electoral votes.
Obama must hold Michigan and Pennsylvania. If he also wins Ohio, with 20 electoral votes, he, in all likelihood, will be in the White House in January.
"If Obama takes two out of three, then I think it's a pretty safe assumption that he'll pick up a couple of votes he needs in other places and win," Shaw said. "There are caveats," he added, mentioning that a failure in Florida for McCain could change the maths considerably.
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