In what is promising to be the closest presidential race since the people of Palm Beach were dimpling the chads on their butterfly ballots, battleground states are a thing of the past.
What really matter are the key counties in those states. Call them battleground counties.
Inside the campaigns, strategists are looking at the counties that could make or break their effort to reach 270 electoral votes.
While the pundits will be chattering about soccer moms, NASCAR dads and the growing importance of single women, Barack Obama and John McCain’s teams will be obsessing over a handful of suburban, fast-growing, politically unpredictable counties in states that could tip the electoral scales.
Here are five they need to be watching:
Once reliably Republican, Jefferson County to the west of Denver, is becoming more volatile. While George W. Bush won about 52 percent of the vote here in the past two elections, recent state and local elections have not been encouraging to Republicans.
The county added 36,000 voters between 2000 and 2004, when almost 272,000 voters went to the polls. Expect at least another 40,000 this year.
It’s an affluent, predominantly white county where corporate commuters crowd Interstate 70 morning and night. McCain’s figures to run well in communities like Golden. Obama will hold sway in denser, close-in spots like Lakewood.
Colorado is crucial to Obama, who will be hoping to capitalize on his August coronation in Denver to help swing the state’s nine electoral votes to Democrats for the first time since 1992. Republicans must hope that the traffic, aggravation and protests at the convention will annoy locals enough to keep Jefferson County red.
Washoe County, Nev.
Once dominated by a mix of mining interests and the tacky tourism of Reno, Washoe County, which covers Nevada’s northwestern edge, has exploded in recent years.
While much of the state’s second most populous county has remained rural, the influx of Californians escaping congestion and taxes has made the southern half of the county, especially near Interstate 80, a demographic dynamo. It’s a mostly white, increasingly affluent county that, like much of its region, boasts an about 16 percent Hispanic population.
Politicians have noticed the boom. Bush eked out a win of less than 3 points in 2004 — identical to his statewide performance. More importantly, 160,000 voters turned out in 2004 compared with the 122,000 who voted in 2000. Turnout may hit 200,000 this fall.
If Nevada’s five electoral votes fall back to the Democrats as they did in 2000, McCain’s chances might dry up.
Jefferson County, Mo.
Obama must like what he sees in the large populations of black voters and affluent urban residents in St. Louis andKansas City.
To offset Obama’s big gains in city and suburban districts, McCain will need to win in the Missouri exurbs. At the top of the list should be almost all-white Jefferson County south of St. Louis, which has grown to become the state’s sixth largest.
In 2000, 77,204 people voted here, and if Ralph Nader’s 2 percent had gone to Al Gore, Bush would have lost the county. In 2004, when 93,246 people voted, Bush won by just a little more than a single point. As old-fashioned Democrats who work at the remaining plants in the county give way to St. Louis commuters, Republicans rightly see an opportunity in Jefferson.
Obama will hope to find favorable ground in and around Cincinnati. And Hamilton County, more than a quarter black and better educated than most of the Buckeye State, may be his best shot at 20 electoral votes untouched by Democrats for 12 years.
Bush won here by 12 points in 2000 but only 6 points in 2004. Meanwhile, the turnout rose from 377,899 to 424,025.
If Obama can make inroads in this socially conservative, traditional county, he will go a long way to locking up Ohio.
People are still fleeing the miasma of Detroit, and more of them are choosing Macomb County to the city’s north. With a record-setting 402,410 votes cast in 2004, up from 345,559 four years earlier, the county is an increasingly attractive prize. Bush won in 2000 and 2004 but never even got 51 percent of the vote.
The county is almost all white. The demographic contrast here is between the residents of what was a remote area beyond Detroit’s 8 Mile Road and new surge of office park denizens. If McCain racks up numbers here, he could bring 17 electoral votes to his column.
