[TheRhinelander]

A few problems with those maps.

PA is not sewn up as an Obama state yet.

WI is definitely in play and a likely red state.

NH is most likely going to be a red state and Maine may be as well.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

If the EC tied, would the Republicans control at least 26 of the state delegations in the House of Representatives?

[nathanbedford]

Joe Trippi says the key to the election is Virginia but I am still of the opinion that the key is Ohio. Without Ohio it is very unlikely that Romney can win. With Ohio he has any number of ways to win.

Further, although Virginia is demographically changing with the bureaucrats of the federal government debauching more and more onto the northern counties, I understand from a remark by Karl Rove that Fairfax has lost about 35,000 voters since 2008 which is not a good sign for Obama. Nor does an assumption that Virginia will simply replay 2008 make sense in view of the electoral history since then. There is also the matter of intensity, and recent developments in Kentucky, Arkansas, South Carolina, and West Virginia all indicate that there is demoralization throughout the whole of the Democrat party but especially in those states which have anything to do with mining coal. Virginia does have coal mining in the Southwest corner. I assume Virginia will be in Romney's column and so that brings me back to Ohio as the true battleground. As an aside we might note that if Pennsylvania goes for Romney the whole of the Midwest including certainly Wisconsin and Iowa, excepting only Illinois and perhaps Michigan, will go Republican. If Romney wins Pennsylvania he almost certainly will win Ohio although the reverse is not necessarily true.

If Romney wins Wisconsin he probably will also have Ohio which is another way of saying that I see the election as similar to the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 in which the electorate breaks strongly for Romney at some point. I think we are rapidly approaching that point. Every move of the Obama campaign so far has been effectively blocked and then parried.

Although I am concededly surprised at the polling numbers in the last few days which saw Romney's Rasmussen total of 50% go down as low as 42%, he has recovered and Obama's surge has tapered off. It appears that the surefooted Obama election machine of 2008 has lost its footing.

If I am correct in this forecast, expect to see an October Surprise involving an attack on Iraq at an opportune time before the election in an effort to change momentum.

[Kaisersrsic]

One question I have been considering is whether Nevada will turn out to be an “easy” win for Romney due to mormons making up 6.9% of its population. Given that this will be an historic election for them, I would expect the LDS would mobilize, knock on doors, and smile Romney to Nevada’s electoral college votes.

[ctdonath2]

Need to do the same wargaming with voting precincts, not entire states.

At the smallest granularity short of individual voters, the red/blue splits run quite strictly across urban/rural borders. Understanding the fluctuation of these borders is crucial. To say “PA may go red” fails to account for whether the urban/rural voter population balance is close enough that slight shifts on city fringes could tip the state one way or another. I know from prior research that NY is blue because NYC, Syracuse, Rochester, Albany & Buffalo just plain out-populate the rest of the state, with per-precinct red/blue changes happening right at the edges of those cities, and no amount of outrage in the red zones will produce enough votes to out-vote the die-hard blue cities.

Real question is: how much must the red rural regions of states encroach upon blue cities to throw a state’s cumulative votes right? is it realistic? There is some population density where a precinct will go blue, without fail.