Via First Read, the AP examines how the election will play out if Obama can boost African-American turnout by 30 percent in the South, as he predicted he would do at a campaign stop last August:
In Georgia, the GOP presidential nominee’s average margin of victory in the past four elections was 216,000 votes. If 30% more voting-age blacks go to the polls in November than the four-year average — with all else equal, and Obama capturing all of those votes — he would win the state by 84,000 ballots. Should 90% of those voters go for Obama, a figure he achieved among blacks in some primaries this year, he would still have enough to win the state and its 15 electoral votes. If Obama reached his goal of a 30% increase and brought all those new black voters into his fold, he could also win in Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Virginia and Florida. Wins in the six states would give him 81 new electoral votes — enough to beat Arizona Sen. John McCain even if the Republican won almost every other toss-up state in the nation, including Michigan, Pennsylvania, Missouri and Ohio. A 30% boost in black turnout also could pull Obama into a tie with McCain in Mississippi. And in South Carolina, a conservative state that went to President Bush by 17 percentage points four years ago, Obama could come within 17,000 votes — less than a percentage point. Ditto in North Carolina, a state often mentioned as a possible Southern pickup for Obama. A 12% increase could flip Virginia and Florida and perhaps one other states, according to author and Dem analyst Tom Schaller.
