Post Election Redux: PENNSYLVANIA

I have Reduxed the three big swing states of Ohio, Florida and Virginia. And you may recall that throughout the election there were 9 of these attention getters out there. The other five were New Hampshire, Iowa, Wisconsin, Colorado, Nevada and North Carolina. And so you would expect that the nine closest races would be in these 9 states. But the reality is a bit different and tips the hat to the Romney team, and begs perhaps a rethinking come the next presidential election. Top ten closest states in descending order: 0.9% FLORIDA 1.9% OHIO 2.2% NORTH CAROLINA 3.0% VIRGINIA 4.7% COLORADO 5.2% PENNSYLVANIA 5.6% IOWA 5.8% NEW HAMPSHIRE 6.6% NEVADA 6.7% WISCONSIN Did you catch that? PENNSYLVANIA was closer that nearly half of the swing states. So IF Pennsylvania wasn't a swing state, why was Wisconsin or Nevada? I would suggest that Nevada never was (in spite of a certain casino magnate’s hundreds of millions of dollars in free speech), and that the only thing that made Wisconsin one was Paul Ryan's name on the ticket.

Looking more closely at the map of Pennsylvania you see a story very much like that of other states. Most notably the vote of urban areas going to Obama: Pittsburgh, Erie, Allentown, Harrisburg, Scranton, Wilkes-Barre and the mother of all--Philadelphia! If you were to take the vote in Philadelphia and subtract from those who voted for Obama the voters who voted for Romney and others so that you are only talking about the net winning votes for Obama, MORE people voted for Obama in Philadelphia that voted for BOTH of the candidates in all of the highlighted and most successful counties for Romney. I hope that what I just described makes sense, but in the abstract what it means is that Philadelphia is the 900 lb gorilla in the room called Pennsylvania.