Cross posted on my blog http://racesandredistricting.blogspot.com/ which has more election analysis.
In the elections of 2000 and 2004, the electoral vote was closely divided between the two candidates with Florida and Ohio as the main swing states. In 2008 though, Obama changed the electoral map by competing in previously Republican states such as Virginia, North Carolina, Indiana and Colorado. His competition expanded electoral opportunities for Democrats and made those areas more swingy. Indiana seems to have reverted back to its Republican roots for 2012 but the states of Colorado, Virginia and North Carolina still remain swing states. This will be extremely helpful to Obama because he has many possible combinations to win against Romney. Obama is facing blame for an economy that is not improving fast enough according to some voters and a higher than hoped for unemployment rate. Then nationwide polls show a small Obama +2 lead nationwide but due to Obama's expansion of the electoral map, Obama definitely has an advantage by holding leads in the swing states. Also, Obama has benefited from the fact that he is more like able than Romney. This historically helps Obama because when did the less like able candidate win the Presidency? Not 2008, not 2004, not 2000, most likely 1976. The reason the national polls are so close is that Romney has solid leads in red states and has cut into Obama's margin in a few Northeastern states (although not enough to win any except maybe Pennsylvania and New Hampshire.) Also, Obama's debate performance brought the race to a near tie. One point though is that debates never decided the popular vote winner since 1960. In 1988, George H.W Bush probably would have won even if Dukakis gave a better response to the question about his wife. In 1992, George H.W. Bush was losing even before he checked his watch. In 2004 though, Kerry won the debates and although this made a close race, it was not enough to win. This 2012 Presidential race reminds of me of 2004. There was a candidate from Massachusetts who was not very likeable, was not liked by the party base at first, had his strength attacked (Kerry's was his military experience, Romney's was his business experience,) and did well in the first debate. Another similarity is that Kerry had an electoral disadvantage with a strategy relying on only Ohio. Romney has an electoral disadvantage too. Even if the national popular vote is a near tie, Obama is still leading because he has an electoral advantage. He posts strong leads in all the Kerry states which equals 246 electoral votes. He also leads strongly in New Mexico which equals 251 electoral votes. To win, all Obama needs to do is find 19 more electoral votes. Anyway though, here are the electoral vote rankings. I wrote a previous post on my rankings and I have used the same descriptions of each state but I have also written updates which are the new parts of this post. In this post, I am just going to give writeups to states in the lean, tilt or tossup columns. My post here http://racesandredistricting.blogspot.com/... has more detailed writeups on Safe and Likely states.