Is this the only plausible victory that the Republicans can have in presidential elections? If so, they need a candidate that can carry Florida and Ohio (and Virginia and Iowa on top of that) with absolute certainty, or at least with better than 50% chance. Does a candidate like that exist?
Colorado would end up in that Republican column with Virginia and Iowa.
Margin spreads, Colorado-vs.-Virginia, have been tightly connected since 1996.
Margin spreads, Colorado-vs.-Iowa, were 4.00 percentage points (the most) since 2004.
Colorado and Iowa have some intrinsic connection: from 1920 to 1984, they carried the same every time. They had a break from each other in 1988, 1996, and 2000. (Look back to the 1930s and 1940s, they aligned with Democrat Franklin Roosevelt in his first two winning cycles, 1932 and 1936, and flipped Republican for 1940 Wendell Wilkie and 1944 Thomas Dewey and, four years later, said no to Dewey and flipped Democratic for the full term election of Harry Truman in 1948.) So, for the last 92 years and 24 election cycles, these two states have carried the same outcomes in 21.
Colorado and Virginia also have an intrinsic connection. Since 1948, they have carried differently just once—in 1992 (when Bill Clinton was the Democratic-presidential pickup winner who flipped Colorado but came up short in Virginia; Bob Dole flipped Colorado to his losing Republican column, in 1996, and the states' margins spreads have been tight ever since). That amounts to 64 years and 17 elections cycles in which they carried the same outcomes in 16 of those 17.
So, your suggested map came very close.
