DuHaime: Pennsylvania, Florida y el Mountain West

Mike DuHaime, director político de McCain, ha explicado en la MSNBC cuales serán los focos que merecerán su atención esta noche. Viene a decir lo que ya comentamos aquí hasta el cansancio al analizar Pennsylvania y Florida. Lo llamativo es que parece más interesado en Pennsylvania que en Ohio.

DuHaime diseñó el año pasado la rocambolesca estrategia de Giuliani para las primarias... pero que no tiemblen los seguidores de McCain, que también formó parte del eficiente equipo electoral de Bush hace cuatro años, como estrecho colaborador de Ken Mehlman. Debería saber lo que hace.

(...) In Pennsylvania, he will be watching the Democratic margin in Philadelphia, he told NBC's Chuck Todd on MSNBC today. Kerry won the city by about 412,000 votes. DuHaime said he'll be watching to see if Obama gets to a 500,000 margin, as Democrats hope. If he doesn't, he thinks it could be a good sign for McCain camp and may signify a long night of counting the vote in the Keystone State.

He's also watching the margins in the Eastern Pennsylvania Philadelphia suburbs, where Democrats hope to do better than Kerry's margins. Kerry got the third most votes out of any county from Montgomery, northwest of Philadelphia.

DuHaime said the campaign expects to do well in rural counties. It will be interesting to see if McCain can beat Bush's margins in the so-called T and if he shrinks margins in or flip Western PA counties won by Kerry, like Fayette, Beaver and Washington.

McCain's team will also be watching Florida and Virginia on the East Coast and Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada in the West, DuHaime said. Duhaime stressed that 8% of the vote came out of the Republican stronghold of the Central Time Zone Panhandle. And they'll be watching the swing counties around Tampa as well as the margins in the I-4 corridor. (...)