McCain strategy

McCain's decision to abandon MI is a shocking admission that he is losing, and that he cannot hope to gain votes in a highly industrial state when the economy is the chief issue of the campaign. Nevertheless, I understand their strategy (at least when it comes to MI) and agree with it.

Nancy Pfotenhauer said last night, "We can get to 260 votes pretty well, and the question is how do you get from 260 to 270." This is full of spin (it's unlikely that McCain will get near 260), but I think it might be useful in trying to infer McCain's strategy. Here's my guess at what they're thinking, below the fold:

1. They recognize that they need to improve across the country to have any shot at winning, either by creaming Obama in a debate or by having a lucky exogenous event. If they manage to do that, they will automatically pick up NC/IN/MO/FL. They will have resources in these places, but it shouldn't be their focus. If they get one lucky break, these states will fall in line automatically, and they'll have more important fish to fry; if they don't get a lucky break, then concentrating on these states will only change a blowout loss to a small loss.
2. Next, almost any winning coalition will have the large, slightly Republican-leaning swing states of VA and OH, which would get them to 260. These states won't come naturally with a lucky break, the way NC/IN/MO/FL will, since Obama's lead is about 2% larger in these than in FL, so McCain will have to concentrate resources here. It'll be tough work for McCain, but it's the obvious strategy.
3. Finally, he needs to get to 270, and as Nancy Pfotenhauer pointed out, there are a number of different ways to do that. The top four ways I see are...
   • CO and NV
   • CO and NH
   • PA
   • MI

On the one hand, some combination of CO/NH/NV might be easier than PA or MI, since Obama is leading CO/NH/NV by quite narrower margins than PA/MI (in fact, NV is only as pro-Obama as OH or VA). On the other hand, PA and MI are each only one state. Really, though, PA should hardly count as one state for purposes of campaign strategy -- winning in PA would require heavy effort in both Philly and Pittsburgh, while winning in CO and NV would require heavy effort in Denver and Las Vegas. I'd say that NV+CO is easier than PA alone, because of the smaller population and the superior coverage of the two main media markets. MI should also be easier to win than PA since McCain trails by 8 in both places, and since it is more dominated by a single metro area.

Indeed, I now see buried at the bottom of an otherwise ludicrous Politico article that an anonymous McCain official says that they're going to get 10 votes from either CO/NH/NV. So there you have it. McCain's strategy must be 1) Have a spectacular debate or get lucky, in order to get closer nationally and to win NC/IN/MO/FL; 2) Win OH, VA, CO; 3) Win either NH or NV.

Ooh, now I'm reading around the blogs a little more, and it looks like I'm rehashing what's already been discovered. Chris Bowers came up with essentially the same strategy that I did, except that he puts FL in the "concentrate resources here" bucket rather than the "get lucky and these states will come automatically" bucket. And Chris Cillizza at the Washington Post reports that McCain is getting to 260 through the exact states I listed, and then is taking a more scattershot approach to get to 270 by competing in CO/NV/NM/NH/MN/WI/PA. If they have enough money, I can understand playing in all four of CO/NV/NH/PA, but I don't see the point to MN/WI/NM.

Put another way, every dollar that McCain wastes by spending in MN/WI/NM is equivalent to Obama spending a dollar in OH/VA/CO/NH/NV/PA.

Hat tip to Todd Beeton for several of the links here.