Political map could be redrawn on election day States once solidly red or blue have good chance to be in play

General election battlegrounds. Chronicle Graphic General election battlegrounds. Chronicle Graphic Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Political map could be redrawn on election day 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

This year's unusual presidential election may toss out one more assumption: the old red-blue map that shows Democrats owning the two coasts, Republicans dominating the South and interior West, and a few battleground states picking the winner.

As Sen. Barack Obama moves toward the Democratic nomination, analysts think he could be riding a wave, where a fresh face coupled with a deep desire among voters for change overwhelms traditional partisan geography, topples GOP strongholds and delivers a powerful new majority for Democrats.

Yet after being written off last summer, Sen. John McCain emerged as the Republican best positioned to hold the White House for his party in a year when nearly everything is against him: an unpopular war, soaring gas prices, sinking home values and a Republican incumbent with poisonous approval ratings.

Analysts point to last Tuesday's twin primaries in Oregon and Kentucky to show how McCain could beat the odds.

The same day that Obama enthralled the young, educated voters of Oregon, he was thrashed in Kentucky, losing many counties by 85 and 90 percent margins.

"I was shaking my head when I looked at the Kentucky results," said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center. "Single-digit numbers are something a fringe candidate gets. You put a Joe Smith, a placebo, on the ballot and they get 7 percent. ... The voters in Kentucky in our poll said they thought Barack Obama would be the next president, yet only 7 percent in some of these counties were voting for him."

And these were Democrats. Parts of pivotal Ohio and Pennsylvania mirror or include Appalachia.

General strategy

The general election will operate very differently from the Democratic primaries, where Obama held his early lead by accumulating delegates based on his share of the vote, keeping the race tight even when he lost big states like California and Ohio to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. In the Electoral College, the winner of each state takes all its electoral votes. The aim is to reach 270 out of a total of 538.

"All things being equal, Obama is a decent bet to break 300, just because it's a very good year for Democrats," said Daron Shaw, a University of Texas professor who worked for Bush in 2000 and consulted for the Republican National Committee in 2004. Holding the blue states and winning Ohio could give him the presidency with one electoral vote to spare.

"But boy, if he loses Ohio and turns around and loses Pennsylvania," Shaw said, "then he's got a math problem."

Obama then would have to recoup those 41 electoral votes someplace else. Taking Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado would yield just 19, leaving him short even of Kerry's losing total.

Young voters key

Yet Obama shows the potential to change the entire map for Democrats by energizing young voters and the upscale urbanites who increasingly make up the base of the Democratic Party.

For all the current fascination with white blue-collar voters, they have been dwindling and drifting Republican for decades. "Among Democratic voters today, professionals and managers outnumber manual workers by a better than 2-to-1 margin," Emory University political scientist Alan Abramowitz wrote for the University of Virginia's Center for Politics.

The GOP faces what Rep. Tom Davis, a retiring Virginia Republican and leading party strategist, called in a 28-page memo last week a "toxic" environment. "If we were a dog food, they'd take us off the shelf," the memo said. Democrats are outstripping Republicans in voter registrations, fundraising and turnout by large margins.

Obama's strongest appeal is among cultural liberals, what Davis called the "granola belt" of college towns and arts and recreation centers like Taos, N.M., and the "Menlo Park/Central Park" crowd of urban sophisticates.

Obama's weakness among the white working class could be offset, Davis said, by a soft economy and an electorate that is more diverse and urbanized than in 2004. And African Americans, who already vote overwhelmingly Democratic, could turn out in even higher numbers for his historic candidacy.

Democrats start with a core of 248 electoral votes, said Simon Rosenberg, president of NDN, a Democratic advocacy organization. Adding four Southwest states, including Arizona, would give Democrats the presidency with 277 Electoral College votes. Adding Florida and Ohio brings it to a knockout of 324, and adding New Hampshire and Iowa would deliver what he called an "enduring Democratic majority" of 335.

Democratic trend

Pointing to polls that now show Obama leading McCain in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia as well as nationally, Rosenberg said the election "is leaning very heavily Democratic right now. Obama has the ability to win a landslide victory both in the popular votes and the Electoral College based on early trend lines."

The Davis memo pointed to exactly those voters to show where McCain should pounce.

"Exit polls in West Virginia showed that two-thirds of Clinton supporters were unwilling to commit to Obama in the fall - and that's just among Democrats!" Davis wrote. "With an economy perceived to be failing, these voters should be easy prey to ANY Democrat, but they're not. Herein lies the key for the McCain campaign."

Despite the stunning Democratic victories in the last three special elections for Republican- held House seats - former House Speaker Denny Hastert's Illinois district and one each in Mississippi and Louisiana - even Democratic strategists think Obama will struggle to win North Carolina and could have a battle in Virginia.

Shaw speculates that perceptions may have shifted in March when Clinton and Obama began to attack each other in an effort to engage blue-collar voters in Ohio.

Back in February, Shaw believed Clinton voters would not have considered voting for McCain, but now may pose a bigger problem as Democrats attempt to unify the party.

"My guess is McCain is going to be on them like crazy," Shaw said.

But if a big Democratic wave gathers speed, said Samuel Popkin, a political scientist at UC San Diego, McCain could lose even his home state of Arizona, just as Democrat Al Gore lost Tennessee in 2000.

"McCain is to Arizona as Gore became to Tennessee in a way - yesterday," Popkin said. "I don't want to overstate it, but I would not be shocked if Arizona got competitive."

Focus on Latinos

The linchpin could be Latinos, the fastest growing voter bloc that went 40 percent for Bush in the last election. Since then, Congressional Republicans have alienated many Latinos with harsh rhetoric and crackdowns on illegal immigration.

McCain is better positioned with Latinos than any of his earlier GOP rivals, having co-authored with Democrat Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., a big immigration bill that would have offered illegal immigrants a path to citizenship. During the Republican primaries, he disavowed his own legislation, but in recent days has been back courting Latinos and the Republican business community with proposals to expand visas.

Independents could be decisive in all the battleground states, but they may be the hardest vote to secure, and the most prone to ride any wave.

"The lion's share of independents are defined by their indifference toward politics and their lack of engagement," Shaw said. "It's always a catch-22 with these voters. You have to spend an enormous amount of energy and resources reaching out to them because they're not all that engaged. It takes a lot to make the case to them, and you're never really sure how they're going to react."

Independents tend to hear only the loudest noises and follow the prevailing wind, he said. "And if that prevailing wind is strongly Democratic - and I think there's a chance it could be this year - then McCain's got some trouble irrespective of Obama's difficulties with blue-collar voters."