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President Obama was accompanied by retiring Sen. Jim Webb at a campaign rally in Virginia Beach.
Earlier this year, Republican candidate Mitt Romney was joined by Gov. Bob McDonnell at an event in Sterling. |
BY MIKE SCHNEIDER
Associated Press
LEESBURG
--How Virginia goes in the presidential election may come down to voters who live amid the small wineries, affluent subdivisions and Civil War battlegrounds of Loudoun County.Voters in Ohio's tony Hamilton County suburbs around the humming riverside economic engine of Cincinnati may tip the balance there.
To win Florida, either President Barack Obama or Mitt Romney probably will have carried Hillsborough County, where the urban seaport town of Tampa bleeds into communities of Spanish-speaking voters and retired Midwesterners.
Those areas are vastly different, yet each is full of fickle voters and bound by a proclivity to swing between Republican and Democrat every four years. All are main targets as the president and his Republican challenger look for enough victories in enough states to reach the 270 electoral votes needed to capture the White House.
The race may come down to an even narrower slice of the electorate than the nine most contested states: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin. The outcome probably will depend on what happens in the 106 counties that Republican George W. Bush won in 2004 but Democrat Obama won in 2008, according to an Associated Press analysis.
The AP reviewed the vote returns in those nine states during the 2000, 2004 and 2008 elections to identify the counties that have swung between the parties and were most likely to do it again on Nov. 6.
In these counties more than anywhere else, voters' phones ring every night with automated surveys. Every day, glossy mailers hit their mailboxes. Televisions crackle day and night with campaign ads.
In fact, voters in the Cincinnati, Tampa and Northern Virginia TV markets have been subjected to presidential campaign advertising totaling $127 million, almost one-fifth the total spent nationwide this year.
In a race where any bit of an advantage could make the difference, the campaigns go to all this trouble to sway a tiny fraction of the electorate. In 2008, there were 6.2 million votes from those 106 counties--not even 5 percent of the roughly 137 million who voted for president.
There is no single reason to explain why these counties seem to shift with the political wind.
In most of these places, there are few truly undecided voters, forcing Obama and Romney to subdivide the electorate in their attempt for any edge.
In Northern Virginia, for example, Obama is reaching out to newcomers and younger veterans. Romney's pitch is stronger toward retired military members, sportsmen and social conservatives.
In counties in the West, Obama is courting educated women and Hispanics. Romney is attempting to make inroads with both, but is more focused on businesswomen and small-business owners.
As a whole, voters in these counties are less racially diverse than the nation, with a smaller percentage having a college education.
One such area is working-class Sandusky County, Ohio, where the automotive industry's rebound has pushed the county's unemployment below the state average. The list also includes parts of southern Virginia with a substantial African-American population and North Carolina's Research Triangle.
If there's one area where these counties are linked, it may be that many have a wide segment of working-class white voters, an important group for Romney and one that Obama has struggled with.
In the hunt for 270, Obama starts with more states and electoral votes in his column. Romney must take back from the incumbent some states that Obama carried four years ago, including North Carolina and Virginia, which had been reliably Republican until 2008.
In Virginia, public and private polls show Obama narrowly ahead. Internal Republican polls have shown Romney leading in Loudoun and Prince William counties. Over time, these once reliably Republican counties have become more politically diverse, as younger, well-educated, racially and ethnically diverse voters have flocked to Washington's suburbs. Obama won four years ago by aggressively going after them and the state's robust African-American electorate.
Romney can win Virginia by taking Loudoun County away from the Democrats, holding down Obama's likely edge in other Washington suburbs, and running up big numbers in rural southern Virginia and the conservative Tidewater area.
