McCain Must Target Michigan and Ohio

I love me a little election strategery, and Patrick Ruffini has a lot of it here. In particular what he finds is a very compelling argument that McCain could push Ohio and Michigan together as one superstate and winning both of them makes it very, very difficult for Obama to make up elsewhere.

This suggests a McCain firewall in Virginia and Colorado, and to a lesser extent Florida, but that won't win it. Rather, the key to victory may lie in targeting Ohio-Michigan as a megastate and trying to shift both states 1-2 points in his direction by brute force. If he does this to tune of just 1%, and nothing else changes, the electoral vote is McCain 291, Obama 247 under a tied popular vote.

The intense targeting behind Florida (2000) and Ohio (2004) shows that it's possible to generate one-state swings that pull "ground zero" states towards the national median. The trick this time will be to spin the Buckeye-Wolverine axis as the new Florida/Ohio, because McCain needs both. This also means we can expect to see lots of Dearborn-to-Toledo bus tours for the Straight Talk Express.

And McCain is already acting like he believes it, visiting the heavily blue and unionized parts of the Buckeye state. Ohio and Michigan together count for 37 electoral votes, or bigger than Texas, Florida, and more than half of California. McCain has always done well in Michigan, in primaries at least, and of all the blue states, Michigan is polling the best for a flip. And of course, I personally like the idea of offense, not defense, Obama really cannot afford to ignore a significant push here.

Both states have battered economies and high unemployment relative to the rest of the nation, and a good campaign plan for economic issues will be crucial. But if gas prices and heating oil continue to rise over the next few months, I'm going to give the edge to John McCain on this front, as he definitely has the more credible policy for reducing energy costs.

Either way, as an Ohio resident, I think I will again have a front row seat this cycle.