Would Obama be winning Arizona if he weren't running against McCain?
it would be very similar to New Mexico and Colorado if McCain weren't running. Rememeber Clinton won here in 96.
I wonder if a comparison with Florida wouldn't be even closer, for many reasons.
I don't think so. Obama would probably make Arizona very, very close by recent standards, but he would probably still loose by more than 5 points against someone like McCain out of state. It would be a whole different story with Romney or Huckabee though. Huckabee would loose 70% of the time, and with Romney it would be almost a tossup.