I could see a 50/50 national election looking something along these lines:
I could see all of that happening except Pennsylvania... Democrats simply get too big a margin in Philly and the inner burbs. I don't see how that changes anytime soon.
Indeed. The GOP has talked about PA for years. What votes are they picking up out of the T that they don't already have? SW PA has gone their direction and they still can't get all that close. Moderation on a national level would be the only way to even SLOW DOWN the Philly 'burbs drift towards the Democrats.
We're getting to a point where the national map just favors the Dems and that's that. The GOP had a huge electoral advantage two separate times in the 20th Century; it's far from unprecedented.
PA's issue for the Republicans is a candidate that can win over the Philly suburbs while winning the blue collar white areas like the Lackawanna/Lehigh Valleys and Northeast/South Philly. As proven between the election results of 2008 and 2012, that will NEVER happen! McCain's numbers were higher in the blue collar white areas but Romney snapped the trend in 2012 sharply in Bucks and Chester and modestly in Montgomery. In other words, going with a populist McCain/Palin approach will get you blue collar whites, but turn off Philly suburbs. Going with the "Yankee Prep School/Harvard Business" approach may be more tolerable in the Philly suburbs, but will anger just enough blue collar whites to the point they'll hold their noses and vote for a black candidate even though they didn't want to cause Romney pissed them off enough.
That said I sincerely hope the GOP wastes more and more resources on PA in the future. Gerrymandering and vote rigging are their only outs.
