Can We Widen the Field?

If the election were held today, Nate Silver’s model gives the president a 96.4% chance of winning. He also shows Obama trailing in South Carolina by 0.2% in his weighted poll average. It’s worth keeping your eye on. I’ve been waiting to see Georgia move into the toss-up category, but, based on admittedly sparse polling, it seems to be moving away from the president. Of all the states that Obama lost, only Montana and Missouri were closer than Georgia.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the Republicans are suffering a bit of a malaise because they don’t really like their candidate. They don’t really trust him, and he isn’t really any more likable to them than he is to the rest of America. That’s why we could really see some drop-off in participation if the polls don’t tighten sufficiently to offer some hope of victory. That’s also why we’ve seen a sudden outbreak of foolishness about “unskewed” polls by Dick Morris and others. It’s critical to the hopes of downticket Republican candidates that the base doesn’t give up and stay home. This may happen on the West Coast regardless, once they see Florida, Virginia, and Ohio declared for the president. But as long as the east coast and central time Republicans believe the Rasmussen and other skewed polls are accurate, they may be able to get a decent turnout.

One thing I hope the Obama administration is thinking about is that we have senate elections in Indiana, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, and Arizona that are all critical. Forget what the polls say today, the president won Indiana and Nevada four years ago, he barely lost Missouri, he did admirably well in Montana, and he probably would have won Arizona if John McCain had not called it his home state. I don’t want the president to take states that are essential to his Electoral College victory for granted, but I want to see him invest a little effort campaigning in some of these states with big senate races. Even if he doesn’t win them, by holding down the margins he can improve the senate candidates’ chances of prevailing.

And he might want to schedule a stop in South Carolina.

He needs to keep working to shore everything up so he is confident of victory. But there should come a time when he can take a couple of shots at flipping an extra state or two. Widening the playing field will also send an important message. It will not only strike fear into the Republicans, but it will tell America that this election is being contested in more than just a dozen “swing-states.”