The Electoral Map

Cillizza has an interesting post about an Obama campaign memo using an electoral map to argue in favor of his electability. There’s nothing odd about using maps in campaign memos — the McCain camp and the Giuliani camp both leaned on maps to push narratives of electability.
What is strange is the map itself.
The Obama [...]

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Indiana has always been known to be Hoosier red.  But Indiana politics guru Brian Howey explains that “There appears to be two kinds of Republicans” in 2008:
“The ‘Obamacans’ as the Illinois senator likes to call them - earnest Republicans deeply disappointed in their own party’s performance on the budget, economy, social issues and the Iraq [...]

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Republican pollster David Winston had a insightful column in Roll Call on Tuesday about the prospects of John McCain putting California into play, but he also had these interesting comments about New Jersey:

“McCain may have been at odds with a part of the GOP base on immigration and other issues. But as it turns out, [...]

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Washington Wire reporter Amy Chozick notes that Clinton has boasted about roots in Scranton, South Texas, the Big Apple, Little Rock, the Golden State and the Midwest. “Even Clinton’s accent occasionally subtly changes from a Southern drawl to a Midwestern twang during some stump speeches.”
Next thing we know she’ll be claiming to be a Cubs [...]

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Beer swigers prefer Clinton and wine sippers like Obama, right?
Not so simple, according to Poblano’s map at FiveThirtyEight.com. It turns out “Obama leads Clinton 13-10 in wine states, and 12-7 in beer states.”
Wine States Versus Beer States

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The McCain camp has divided the electoral map into 11 regions and assigned a campaign director to each one.
John Peschong’s region has the most electoral votes but Jon Seaton’s will probably be the most pivotal.  One glaring question is why the McCain team would split the three key states in the Upper Mississippi River Valley [...]

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Soren Dayton posted a fascinating analysis at Red State last week detailing the ward-by-ward electoral map of Philadelphia and concluding that Barack Obama ’s poor performance in ethic Catholic neighborhoods might signal a “realignment that puts the Northeast and the Rust Belt back in play” (If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s a must-read and [...]

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… And gives McCain a lot of credit for picking up on early warnings.  Broder writes, “McCain for one seems to have grasped that warning. Over the past week, as he toured the South from Selma to Little Rock, he clearly was signaling a shift from the traditional GOP way of courting Dixie voters.”

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Hillary Clinton’s sweep of Pennsylvania hill country was the latest indication that she is much more popular in Appalachia than her rival Barack Obama. Hillary has been has been posting big wins in congressional districts like Virginia’s Ninth and Ohio’s Sixth and racking up huge margins in Appalachian counties from the Tennessee River to the [...]

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More maps up later today, but here’s a preliminary one.
Just as I predicted, Barack Obama won Rendell’s base and Hillary Clinton swept Casey Country.  Except Clinton did much better in the burbs and exurbs surrounding Philly than Casey did.  I’ll let Chuck Todd explain:
“Obama looked to be a lock to win the Philly ‘burbs; the [...]

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