Waarom ik door het HQ naar Pennsylvania ben gestuurd:

Excerpt from today’s San Francisco Chronicle

Pennsylvania is key

[Tom] Ridge also predicted that whoever wins Pennsylvania will win the presidency.*

McCain is pinning his hopes on winning Pennsylvania’s 21 electoral votes, his last shot at offsetting a string of potential losses in states that President Bush won in 2004. Democratic nominee John Kerry won Pennsylvania in 2004, and a raft of polls give Obama a double-digit lead.

The McCain campaign has "virtually surrendered 21 electoral votes in New Mexico, Colorado and Iowa that were won by Bush, there’s no Kerry state he’s winning, and Bush won by 16 electoral votes," said Pennsylvania pollster G. Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin and Marshall College. "A third-grader can figure this out. They’ve decided that it’s 21 electoral votes in PA or it’s over."

Pennsylvania "has an electorate that is older, conservative, blue-collar, Catholic, Hillary voters, Reagan Democrats," Madonna said. "They picked it. Why? Because they’re out of options. They’ve not only rolled the dice; it’s the only game in town."

* (Tom Ridge is the former governor of Pennsylvania. He is a Republican and was in the running for the VP pick)