What are the most vulnerable "red" states?

~and I dont mean communist thats for sure.


Id go with Ohio, Florida

not utah - in 92 clinton came 4th there.

Bush, Perot, ... , Clinton?

bush got 70something % there (78%) perot got 19% and third was a guy called Bo Gritz who advocates getting out of the UN, declaring war on the UN, arming everyone over the age of 8 to attack the UN, and abolishing the legal drinking age.

n/t

Ripe. Ripe.

Later.

RJS

we're the land of robert byrd, for christ's sake! don't take the state for granted like gore did or write it off to bush like i fear kerry's going to.

campaign here a few times and the people will come.

Ohio is a 'maybe, but the 4 in my subject line are just ACHING to go blue, with the right amoubnt of attention...

Not that I'd really call WV "red", because prior to 2000 it was a pretty safe "blue" state.

The moral in these selections is to abandon the "Southern Strategy". We should certainly campaign down there to get a message out, but reserve the lion's share of campaign resources for the SW and Midwest.

Those regions are where the race will be won.

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http://www.uselectionatlas.org/USPRESIDENT/

Reviewing the results from last election would seem to suggest that these states, which, except FLA and LA are not "Southern", and therefore the strategy should be to give lip service to the South but put the heavy guns in OH, AZ, NH, NV, with a big push in FLA too. More of a "Southwestern" and "Midwestern" strategy.

What's important is not only 2000 results, but state trends and specifics as well. Sure, Florida was close, and we start out with about a 40,000 vote advantage, but Jeb Bush just won a re-election largely played out on the same themes that will pervade this election, and the state's trending republican (the equation looks something like 2000 votes casted - dead depression kids - retired Eisenhower kids + Mexican and Mexican-American immigrants - southern kids of northeastern parents).

Much of New Hampshire is in the Kerry home media market. It's still called a republican state, but a moderate-ish republican barely got elected in an off year election when the national tilt was more to the GOP than it will be this year. It's good as blue barring a blowout.

Nevada and Arizona have decent demographics. Both have reasonble margins, democratic statewide success in recent years, and the states are getting more and more Latino in their makeups. They are getting more urban as well, and Las Vegas is a service-industry town ripe for the picking. The Yucca Mountain issue also plays in our favor.

West Virginia is trending each year culturally more and more to the GOP, but in the end I think the only reason they voted their heart in 2000 was because the job market looked pretty good. That's been fixed, so to speak. With a hunter on our ticket, their heart won't be as much in play anyway.

I left Arkansas out of the first tier since there's a lot of statewide growth in the Wal-Mart part of the state, but Clark or Landrieu on the ticket could put it in the front.

Missouri's got nothing to make me think it'll go over to our column in a close race, and Holden's unpopularity will hurt. Ohio looks a little better, but it's hard to tell since there's been absolutely no recently competitive elections on the statewide level.

But it wouldn't surprise me if you see Florida in the red but Virginia in the blue. The margin was only 52.5-44.5, not far off from WV and AR. Virginia now has a democratic governor who won on a sportsmen-for-Warner strategy that Kerry could copy. I also think Fairfax County alone will shift 50,000 votes from a 5K Bush win to a 45K Kerry advantage. If Nader loses half of his votes, that cuts Bush's margin to 40,000 votes, or about 1.3%.