State of the Race: The 10 Battlegrounds

Battleground Watch

From the start of this blog I have argued North Carolina is not a Battleground State and Pennsylvania is.  Both were somewhat controversial and I expected one of these assertions to become less controversial (North Carolina) and one to become more greatly contested (Pennsylvania) as the election wore on. Today, unfortunately, only one of those assertions remains controversial (North Carolina, although the evidence continues to lean my way) and the other one continues to fade from contention (Pennsylvania, still contestable but far less likely to flip).  McClatchy news service  takes advantage of is newspaper reach and gets excerpts from reporters about each of the 10 Battleground States (they include North Carolina and drop Pennsylvania):

Get ready for an all-out brawl in 10 too-close-to-call battleground states as President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney begin a two-month sprint to Election Day. They will deluge those states with personal visits, stacks of direct mail, automated phone calls and an unprecedented barrage of TV ads in tossup states Florida, New Hampshire, Virginia, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Iowa, Colorado, Nevada, Michigan andOhio. They’ll probably all but ignore the rest of America. Strategies for easing what’s become chronic economic pain are the most prominent topic everywhere, though different states have different concerns. Nevada is stuck with a historic housing crisis. Ohio and Wisconsin are trying to revive struggling manufacturing industries. Virginia and North Carolina, once the economic jewels of the New South, have lapsed.  With dispatches from McClatchy newspapers around the country, here’s a state-by-state look:

FLORIDA (29 electoral votes)

Florida reflects the nation: the southeast of the state is akin to the Northeastern U.S.; southwest Florida is tied to the Midwest, and the north of Florida is like the Deep South. Then there’s Miami-Dade, the state’s largest and most Hispanic county, which functions as a Latin American capital. Romney and supporters have dumped an estimated $45 million on television ads in Florida just for the general election. Obama and his allies have spent about $25 million. The Republicans held their convention in the Tampa Bay area, the most hotly contested battleground region of the state. Romney holds an edge in money, but Obama’s so-called “ground-game” organization of thousands of volunteers and nearly 100 field offices appears unmatched. The two are essentially tied, with Obama narrowly ahead of Romney by an inside-the-error margin lead of about 2 percentage points, according to the averages of the latest reputable statewide polls. Obama won Florida by fewer than 3 percentage points in 2008, but the toll of the bad economy has hurt his standing. The unemployment rate stands at 8.8 percent, and Florida’s foreclosure rate is the third highest in the nation.

OHIO (18 electoral votes)

Ohio loves its reputation as one of the most unpredictable of the bellwether states, and 2012 is no exception. Obama has visited the Buckeye State 27 times since taking office in 2009, including 11 this year. Romney has been to the state 13 times since last year. Obama and Romney are locked in a statistical dead heat in Ohio. The Columbus Dispatch recently recorded its closest presidential poll in modern history, with Romney leading Obama by only 0.22 percentage points, a figure well within the survey’s margin of error. As in other states, the economy is the dominant issue in Ohio, and voters appear evenly divided on whether Obama or Romney would provide better leadership on the issue. Though Ohio is a Rust Belt state, it’s doing better on jobs compared with other parts of the country. The state’s July unemployment rate was 7.2 percent – lower than the nation’s 8.1 percent jobless rate. John Green, a political scientist at the University of Akron, said that because of the state’s comparatively lower unemployment picture, the election could hinge on second-tier issues like the environment or abortion.

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h/t Karl Ushanka