It is kind of interesting, that so many maps have VA as going Dem, in a very tight election. Why? Because despite it having a dead even PVI, it's trending Dem. And there is not that much controversy about it. But when it comes to Pub trending PA, and in the last two elections, trending at a faster rate than VA in the Dem direction, with about a .75% Dem PVI, it causes fire fight as to whether PA is in real play in a very tight election. Sure 75 basis points, which is the difference, is not chopped liver, but all the sound and fury about it all, just doesn't make that much sense to me.
I think some of it is due to this perception, that the Pubs will have trouble closing the 4% margin by which Romney lost. True, if that is the margin, the Dems are going to win. They are very, very probably going to win with a 2% margin (even a 1% margin is very likely to be enough). So if the Pubs cannot close the popular vote gap nationwide, it's curtains for them. But if they do, and given that swings vary, if it is not PA where they close the gap more than the nation, where is it going to be? Some states need to trend Pub. All states don't swing equally. Which states might that be, if not PA? And I say this in the context, that absent the Dem candidate being a liberal black (a secular one to boot), one might posit that the Dem candidate might do better in some places than whatever the national swing in many places in the South. So if one posits a Dem trend in much of the South, that means that there needs to be even more of a Pub trend elsewhere, in order to get to the overall national swing.
In summary, much of the heat about PA to me seems to be conflating how much the swing will be, as opposed to the trend. It's two different issues.
Torie was bang on here.
Sooo much prognosticating in this forum (and to be fair, outside of it too) basically takes the form "assume the status quo pretty much continues forever".
