
More Pennsylvania
October 23, 2008Hotair seems to agree with me:
Nearly everyone in a position to know thinks the race for Pennsylvania’s 21 electoral votes is considerably tighter than what recent polls reveal.
“There’s a tendency in Pennsylvania for the polls to change dramatically in the final days,” says John Brabender, a top Republican political consultant based in Pittsburgh. “In the governor’s race in 2002, there were polls just a few days out showing [Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell] with a 25-point lead and he ended up losing 50 of 67 counties and won by nine points.”…
The McCain campaign’s formula for winning the state begins with the notion that, despite voter registration gains and strong support for Obama in Philadelphia, it would be difficult to wring more votes out of the state’s largest city than the Kerry campaign did.
They even believe they can carry a few of the heavily Democratic city’s 66 wards, a feat George W. Bush was unable to accomplish in 2004.
“We’re not convinced they can blow it out again,” said a McCain campaign source.
And in the four populous and historically Republican collar counties surrounding Philadelphia, the campaign believes McCain is a far better fit for the socially moderate suburbs than President Bush.