Base map for a Hillary Clinton vs. Generic R race:
Maybe add NV and NM to Clinton.
Tennessee is always a point or two more Democratic than Kentucky, so that should be a tossup as well. In this scenario Indiana would likely be a tossup again too.
I don't think she'd win WV, KY, or LA.
Depends on the candidate. It's kind of strange- her best chances to win states like WV/KY/LA are against a moderate or an extremist. What I mean is, a ticket like Clinton/Warner might defeat a ticket like Christie/Martinez in WV/KY/LA because the Christie/Martinez ticket is the wrong type of Republican ticket for those states- moderate, more focused on fiscal issues than social ones (despite their raging social conservatism, WV and KY happen to be pretty fiscally liberal), from urban blue states, etc. The other side of the issue is that if the Republican candidate was simply a weak extremist, like Ted Cruz, Clinton would have a chance for other, more obvious reasons. Clinton's worst chances to win the state is if she's running against someone in between those two groups- a solid Evangelical conservative who would at least be competitive against Hillary nationwide. The candidate that comes to mind is Scott Walker: I doubt he'd beat Hillary overall, but he is the candidate who would easily beat Hillary in Appalachia. Whatever happens though, the real story is Hillary's IMPROVEMENT in Appalachia. She could lose West Virginia, Kentucky, and Louisiana, heck she could even lose Arkansas, but the story would be her losing by 5 points in states Obama lost by 20-30 points.
To the extent that the rural South would swing to Hillary, I think she would have a better chance in the states that Obama came close in. I would be far more interested in how she might swing NC (the obvious one) or GA. Obama already won it twice, but I would also expect Hillary to overperform massively in FL due to her appeal to older voters. She obviously has a Western problem and it's really hard for me to pin down whether she is a better or worse fit than Obama for VA. I imagine her Southern performance would be an average of Bill Clinton and Obama. I would expect a 51/47 Clinton win against generic R to look something like this:
