http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7010-2004May6.html?referrer=email . . .
What's distracting us from the political road ahead is the pernicious but popular conceit of "battleground states." It holds that the 16, 17 or 18 states where the presidential vote was fairly close in 2000 "will decide this election," as host Chris Matthews of "Hardball" proclaimed recently.
Maybe so. But history suggests another outcome: that this election's real battleground states will be different from those of 2000. And what's virtually certain is this: Covering the last election, like fighting the last war, vastly increases the chances we'll miss what really matters in this one.
There was an early hint of precisely that in the latest Post-ABC News poll. Barely a month ago President Bush was trailing presumed Democratic nominee John Kerry. Today he's narrowly ahead -- with most of that movement outside the anointed battlegrounds, suggesting that other states may now be in play. A case in point: New Jersey, which Al Gore won by 16 points in 2000 but where Bush is running neck-and-neck with Kerry in the polls. Meanwhile in Wisconsin, a reputed battleground, Bush is up by a dozen points in a survey released last week.
One big problem with using the past to predict the future is that the real battlegrounds differ dramatically from election to election. States where the vote was close one year might produce landslides four years later. States that were not competitive in the previous election might subsequently produce cliffhangers.
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