Why McCain is
Leaving Michigan — and What It Means
for Nov. 4
MICHIGAN (By Andrew Romano,
Newsweek) October 4, 2008 ―
Last night's debate between Sarah
Palin and Joe Biden may not have
"altered the basic contours of the
race." But that doesn't mean nothing
important happened yesterday. It's
just that it was happening 365 miles
to the northeast, in the great state
of Michigan.
Lost Thursday evening amid all the
Beltway blather and bloviation about
the Showdown in St. Louis was one of
the most significant revelations
since the start of the race. John
McCain, it seems, has decided to
pull out of the Great Lakes State.
As Politico's Jonathan Martin
reported first, "McCain will go off
TV in Michigan, stop dropping mail
there and send most of his staff to
more competitive states." The
information leaked after McCain, who
has watched Barack Obama surge to a
sizable lead in national and swing
state polls over the past few days,
canceled a local event scheduled for
next week. "It was always a long
shot for us to win," said an aide.
That's probably accurate. But the
truth is, without Michigan — which
the campaign has now all but
admitted that it will lose — it's
very difficult to see how McCain can
emerge victorious on Nov. 4. For
months, McCain has made Michigan the
centerpiece of his electoral
offense, and with good reason. Iowa,
a state that George W. Bush won in
2004, is almost certain to swing to
Obama; he currently leads there by
more than 10 points on average. Same
goes for New Mexico, where Obama's
ahead by 8. When combined with John
Kerry's 251 electoral votes, those
two states alone would put Obama
within seven of the magic 270 mark;
a single, additional win in either
Colorado, Virginia, Ohio or Florida
— all of which currently favor the
Democrat — would put him over the
top. Which is why McCain, desperate
to make up ground, has long pinned
his hopes on Michigan. The Arizona
senator was polling within 2 points
of his Illinois opponent as recently
as Sept. 10.
Unfortunately, the recent avalanche
of distressing economic news —
especially impactful in a state with
the nation's highest level of
unemployment — seems to have moved
the expensive Great Lakes State out
of McCain's reach. The two polls
released since Sept. 24 — PPP and
the Detroit Free Press — show Obama
ahead by 10 and 13 points,
respectively, and his average lead
has more than tripled (from 2
percent to 7 percent) over the past
three weeks. McCain's internal
polling likely confirms these
margins otherwise, he'd be staying
put. As a result, Republican
strategists said the Republican
nominee would now reinvest his
Michigan resources in a quartet of
Kerry states: Pennsylvania,
Wisconsin, Minnesota and New
Hampshire. "He could take any one of
them," an RNC bigwig told me.
But while the GOP is outwardly
optimistic, a closer look at the
numbers shows McCain is no stronger
in these states than in Michigan.
McCain's strongest pick-up
possibility is probably the
unpredictable Granite State, where
Obama now leads by an average of 4
points but where McCain has a long
history of electoral success. Still,
the senator would need more than New
Hampshire's four electoral votes to
make up for likely losses in Iowa
and New Mexico — and neither
Wisconsin, Minnesota or Pennsylvania
is currently leaning his way. In
Wisconsin, he trails by 5 points; in
Minnesota, he lags by 5.7; and in
Pennsylvania, he's behind by nearly
8. According to FiveThirtyEight.com,
a site that blends current polling
with demographic statistics and past
electoral results to generate
remarkably accurate Election Day
projections — see its primary season
record here — the only Kerry state
that McCain has a better chance of
capturing than Michigan (13 percent)
is New Hampshire (37 percent).
Pennsylvania, at 14 percent, is a
wash; Minnesota and Wisconsin (8
percent each) are probably out of
reach.
Ultimately, then, McCain's Michigan
withdrawal underscores how limited
his electoral map has become. In
confirming the news, McCain field
director Mike DuHaime was quick to
note that the campaign would move
staff to Maine, which awards its
electoral votes by congressional
district. The announcement was
revealing. Apparently, the McCain
campaign is now staking its path to
victory, at least in part, on Obama
winning Iowa, New Mexico and
Colorado and losing New Hampshire,
which would result in a 269-269 draw
— at which point McCain would turn
to Maine's Second Congressional
District (where Kerry won 52-46) for
the tie-breaking vote. The problem
with this scenario, though, is
that's there's no room for error.
For Maine to matter, Obama would
have to lose his 4-point lead in New
Hampshire; his 2-point lead in Ohio;
his 3-point lead in Florida; his
0.5-point lead in Nevada; his 0.5
lead in North Carolina; and his
2.4-point lead in Virginia. Not one
of them — all of them. Meanwhile,
Maine's second district would have
to break sharply with the rest of
the state, which currently favors
Obama by 7.6 percent. Could it
happen? Sure. These stats are based
on current polling, and as September
showed us, voter preferences still
fluctuate in response to events.
It's just that at this point, Obama
has a 7 or 8 plausible paths to 270
— and McCain has only one. So it
doesn't look likely.
