According to Howard Wolfsson, "the road to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue goes through Pennsylvania.". I have done some calculations, and gone through the map, and i found that we don't have to win Pennsylvania to win the GE.
In the map below, the states that Kerry won are marked with blue. The states Bush won by a wide margin are colored red. Swing states are colored green. Kerry won PA,but I have colored it red to prove my point.
The blue states are the states Kerry won in 2004, green states was close and red states was Bush states.
I will give a small explanation. I will assume that a combination of Bushs record low approval rating, along with 8 years of republican rule will get democratic voters out in droves, hence securing the Kerry states quite easy. I have chosen to use a very conservative prediction, keeping both Florida and Ohio in red. That leaves Colorado, Iowa, Missouri, New Mexico, Nevada and Virginia as swing states. Usually Arizona would be among the swing states, but considering Senator McCain is from Arizona, I have put it in the red column. Assuming that we lose Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania we will have to win all 6. If we win those 6 states, it will be a draw. Giving each candidate 269 electoral votes. If that happens, the house of representatives will elect the President (we better do what we can to help the dems keep the majority).
There is also a small possibility that he can put states like Nort and Sout Dakota in play, each with 3 electoral votes.
Even though I have put both Ohio and Pennsylvania in the red column. We will have a good chance at wining them. Both states have democratic governors, and when we approach November, McCains approval rating will have declined substantially. Putting both states in play. I don't think we will win Florida, the aging population along with the "delegate problem" will make a Florida win an expensive uphill climb. The good news is that we don't need Florida.
On this map I added Kansas and Montana as swing states.
Here are some numbers (electoral votes in brackets):
Last I would like to present my most optimistic, but yet plausible scenario.
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