Pennsylvania is hardly fool's gold - it wouldn't take much to turn it over. Michigan might be more appropriate.
And Texas is hardly comparable to New Jersey.
If I understand the term correctly you want a state that is fairly close but yet so polarized that it is hard to get over to your side. Washington, Oregon and New Jersey all seem to be in this category for the GOP. For Democrats it should be close-ish Southern states and that used to be NC and VA until Obama won them. Now it might be a state like GA. Arizona used to be in this category as well, IIRC.
You have to remember that Bush Sr won PA and NJ. They are comparable to VA and NC, because the GOP has not have that kind of election recently, where it would win those kind of states. The Dems had that with 2008. That said, these states are clearly not moving to the left, if anything they are moving right.
I agree that things get skewed because it's been quite a while since the last GOP landslide, whereas Obama won handily last time around - most "fool's gold" for the Democrats were won by Obama in 2008, basically.
