Ignore national White House polling: Ohio is the key
The state that’s most likely to be the “tipping point”
Everything in US presidential election is about the so called “swing states” – the ones that can move every four years and have a huge impact on the overall result.
There are about twelve of them and the most important of all is Ohio which, according to the US polling and election expert, Nate Silver has a 30% chance of being the “tipping point” state – meaning that it would cast the decisive votes in the Electoral College that would put the winner at the 270 threshold or above.
Nate has a good chart here showing where each state fits based on its previous record and polling.
This view was echoed in a recent interview with Frank Luntz who said that the only sets of polling numbers that mattered were Ohio and Virginia which is second on the tipping point list.
Inevitably the key states are where the action has been and where the money is being spent by the two campaigns and the bodies that support them. In the rest of the US you’d barely notice until now that an election is going on.