The Command Post
2004 US Presidential Election
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February 05, 2004
Bush | November's Battleground States

I’ve posted a chart on my blog that combines Bush’s 2000 state-by-state margins of victory (or defeat) with the number of electors at stake in 2004 to produce a ranking of which states promise to be the principal battlegrounds this fall. You can go here for the full post explaining how I computed the factors in the chart and some thoughts on what this means for a Bush/Kerry race. Here are the top 20 battleground states:

StateMargin (%)ElectorsFactor
Florida0.0092733293159.23
New Mexico-0.065133748.37
Wisconsin-0.21020725.89
Iowa-0.377042.23
Oregon-0.473583.08
New Hampshire1.34248.00
Minnesota-2.410173.15
Ohio3.520159.05
Pennsylvania-4.221120.76
Missouri3.31198.69
Tennessee3.91173.63
Michigan-5.11764.51
California-11.85539.51
Nevada3.6539.32
Washington-5.61135.33
Arizona6.31025.30
Arkansas5.4620.25
Virginia8.01320.08
Maine-5.1415.29
Louisiana7.7915.28



Posted by Baseball Crank at February 5, 2004 09:28 AM | TrackBack
Comments

One problem with relying on the 2000 results is that the demographics have changed somewhat, in some places. Florida for example is now leaning towards Bush. (Governor Bush won reelection by a wide margin in 2002.)

The absense of a strongish 3rd party candidate, and the fact that the Democrat is not the incumbent’s VP will change the dynamic a lot too.

On my blog, I’ve been following the speculators at the tradesports.com site who vote with their money. Based on that, it looks like the really close races will be in Michigan, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.

Posted by: Tim Shell at February 6, 2004 11:20 PM

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