Who will win Pennsylvania in the 2008 presidential election?

Crowd size estimated at 15,000 for McCain Palin rally! Check out these pictures:

http://www.myfoxphilly.com/myfox/MyFox/pages/sidebar_video.jsp?contentId=7488820&version=1&locale=EN-US
http://media.myfoxphilly.com/slideshows/palinrally/1/med/rally%204.htm

Excerpt from a NRO (highly right wing, but still credible) blog that i found interesting if not over hope filled:

JOE BIDEN

The Washington Post Reports on the 'Bitterness and Backwardness' of Scranton, PA

By declaring "no coal plants here in America," Joe Biden has effectively ceded Western Pennsylvania to the McCain campaign.

PolitickerPA:

1. Most anthracite coal is found in Pennsylvania.
2. Pennsylvania has 29 billion tons of coal reserves, or 6.1% of the country's reserves.
3. The combined direct and indirect contributions of the coal industry to Pennsylvania's economy are more than $10 billion.
4. Using more than 57 million tons, Pennsylvania ranks fourth in coal use.
5. Pennsylvania employs more than 9,300 miners.
6. Pennsylvania distributes more than 75 million tons of coal each year.
7. Pennsylvania has 82 underground mines and 225 surface mines.
8. About 58% of the electricity used in Pennsylvania is produced by coal.
9. Pennsylvania produces about 7% of the country's coal supply.
10. Pennsylvania has 23 coal-fired power plants.

Good luck winning the state with just Philly and some of the 'burbs, Senators.

The Washington Post, meanwhile, reports for duty to help Obama:

The campaign even ran an early ad in this market emphasizing Biden's roots here. But those roots may not cure all in a region where Obama's top campaigners, a couple of popular Lackawanna County commissioners, received hate mail during the primary just for backing the Illinois senator. More than is sometimes acknowledged, residents say, this is a region wrestling with bitterness and backwardness, the kind that Aunie Frisch, who has Chinese ancestry, sometimes finds maddening.

Gee, with all that "bitterness and backwardness," do they cling to anything? Religion and guns, perhaps?

09/23 02:26 PM

more right-wing squabble (prognostic power?) :


Obama's In Good Shape in Pennsylvania, As Long As 53 Percent of the Voters are Democrats

ARG puts Obama ahead of McCain, 50 percent to 46 percent.

And I'm usually willing to cut a pollster some slack on the partisan breakdown of their sample. But for this poll, the sample was 53 percent Democrat and 39 percent Republican. And the 8 percent of independents break for McCain, 51 percent to 41 percent.

A reader notes that on Election Day 2006, exit polls found the voter pool in Pennsylvania to be 43 percent Democrat, 38 percent Republican, and 19 percent independent. In 2004, it was 41 percent Democrat, 39 percent Republican, and 20 percent independent.

If you plug in the same ARG results with the voter makeup of 2006, you get, by my calculations, McCain 49.1 percent, Obama 46.19 percent.

09/23 01:03 PM

Funny how McCain's choice to put more money into Pa. by dropping out of Michigan has had a negative effect on his forecast in Pa. My only theory would be that possibly the debate on Thursday negated any up in the forecast he may have gotten. Any other ideas?

Ryan