What state will be the biggest surprise on election night?

[Sam Spade]

I'll go away from the normal states and pick a weird one:

I don't think it'll change status, but it will be much closer than people are looking at and is one of the few places that historically has what I call "incumbent bias".

Hawaii

[Sam Spade]

I am willing to bet even money that Kerry/DNC/unaffiliated ground groups bet all of their money on doing what Gore did in 2000:  bringing out people on the SE Gold Coast.

It's one of the reasons why I always predicted Florida would be +2-3% of Bush's national average.

When you looked at VAP/RV turnout from 2000, you discovered some interesting numbers.  In the Gold Coast turnout was about 7-8% higher in 2000 than it was in the Panhandle and SW Florida, along with the various suburbs of other cities (the Bush strong areas).

Based on that, I figured that if Bush could get turnout levels to where the Dems were in 2000, he would gain roughly 200,000 votes or 2%.  I also figured it would be very hard for Kerry to push turnout levels much higher than Gore did (they were already pushing their limits in 2000).

Turns out that I was right:

Broward:
2000 RV% 64.8%
2004 RV% 66.8%

Palm Beach:
2000 RV% 66.0%
2004 RV% 74.6%

Miami-Dade:
2000 RV% 69.7%
2004 RV% 73.2%

Add that to the fact that in Broward and Palm Beach, Bush made large inroads in the Jewish retiree population and things were a wash from 2000.  Even if Kerry had maintained Gore-like percentage, he wouldn't have added more than 100,000 votes.

Compare this to the best largest Bush counties in terms of numbers:

Duval
2000 RV% 62.5%
2004 RV% 74.0%

Escambia
2000 RV% 68.3%
2004 RV% 75.5%

Hillsborough
2000 RV% 72.2%
2004 RV% 74.6%

Lee
2000 RV% 72.9%
2004 RV% 78.9%

Add to that the Bush counties are growing the fastest in Florida as well and I really have a hard time seeing Florida as a perennial toss-up state as long as the GOP has a good ground game.  It's hard to get 3 counties to overcome so many others.