The NYT had an item a couple of weeks ago about the Obama campaign taking the “50-state strategy” pretty seriously, including on-the-ground operations in every state and inquiring about advertising rates in 25 states, including “red” states like Georgia, Mississippi, and North Carolina.
When it comes to “stretching” the map, how ambitious a plan are we talking about?
Mr. Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, said that the primary contest had left the campaign with strong get-out-the-vote operations in Republican states that were small enough that better-than-usual turnout could make a difference in the general election. Among those he pointed to was Alaska, which last voted for a Democrat in 1964.
Alaska? “The Last Frontier” has been part of the electoral college long enough to compete in the last 12 presidential campaigns. The Republican candidate won 11 of them, and the only time a Dem won Alaska was in 1964, when LBJ cruised past Barry Goldwater in a national landslide.
And yet, there’s the Obama campaign, specifically pointing to Alaska as a state they’re keeping an eye on. I can appreciate ambitious strategies as much as the next guy, but John Kerry just lost in Alaska by 26 points four years ago. Is it even remotely realistic to consider the state in play just one cycle later?
In one of the bigger surprises of Election 2008, early polling shows Barack Obama as potentially competitive in Alaska.
The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Alaska voters finds John McCain earning 45% of the vote while Barack Obama attracts 41%. Seven percent (7%) say they’d vote for some other candidate while another 6% are not sure. This is the third straight poll showing Obama within single digits of the presumptive GOP nominee [in Alaska].
Wait, it gets better.
Maybe the Rasmussen poll is a fluke? Perhaps, but it’s not the only poll pointing to Alaska as competitive.
A Democratic-funded poll out of Alaska suggests that Barack Obama’s pledge to expand the traditional Electoral College playing field this fall may well find fertile soil in places that haven’t seen a competitive presidential race in decades.
John McCain leads Obama 44 percent to 42 percent in Alaska, with Libertarian nominee Bob Barr taking 3 percent, according to the Global Strategy Group survey, which was conducted for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and obtained by The Fix.
Nate Silver makes the case that the Obama campaign has every reason to consider Alaska competitive.
There is certainly some novelty value in the notion of a Democrat competing in Alaska. But it’s a state that the Obama campaign ought to be taking reasonably seriously: Alaska is the youngest state in the country in a year where we have the largest-ever age gap between the two nominees. Indeed, it’s probably time for Obama to visit Alaska. I don’t have any numbers on this, but I would guess that candidate visits make more difference in smaller states, and particularly those that are out of the way geographically. If Obama visits Alaska, it will create a ton of earned media, and McCain will probably have to follow him to defend the state.
Markos added, “There is a dramatic political shift happening in Alaska before our very eyes…. We can take those 3 EVs from McCain.”
I realize it may seem odd to focus attention on a state with three electoral votes that has backed the Republican candidate in every election for more than four decades. But if Obama is seriously competitive in Alaska, it would point to a map that’s been stretched in ways few thought possible.