Battleground States according to USA Today.
On this electoral map, the grey colored states are considered "swing states" or "battleground states" with regards to the coming 2012 presidential election. There are 12 such states from Nevada to New Hampshire (just below Maine) on this USA Today map. Generally speaking, when you hear talk of "the battleground states," these states are included. Some believe that as many as 16 states are in play during the current election cycle. Whatever the case, the coming election will be fought within these boundaries.
Immediately after the State of the Union speech, Obama visited four of these swing states (Iowa, Nevada and Colorado and Michigan). He added Arizona to his five state tour, a state that voted against him on a close count in 2008. He clearly thinks his opposition to Governor Jan Brewer and the lawsuit his DoJ has filed against Arizona, will win that state to his cause in the coming election.
I took time to make a list of states that voted GOP in 2000, 2004 followed by a Democrat/Obama vote in 2008. There are ten such states: Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, Nebraska, Iowa, Indiana, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida. If the populations of these states are as frustrated with Obama as is the rest of the nation, they will revert to their past traditions. If that happens, Obama will lose 117 electoral votes and the election.
It takes 270 electoral votes to win. In 2008, Obama took the election with 365 votes on the wings of a campaign that was not honest in describing the extent of the "change" he had in mind. No one knew, for example, that he would circumvent the congress as a matter of policy and act on his own - similar in function to a dictator. No one knew that he would be the first president to include those who openly shared the values of Karl Marx (Van Jones, Obama's green czar, and Elizabeth Warren, the woman who designed the first Consumer Protection agency - an agency created to manage Big Banking against the common man ) and the Chinese despot, Mao (Anita Dunn - his first communication adviser). He was silent as to his plans to take over the auto industry, something that was in the works from 2007. And know one had a hint about his angst with the Catholic Church, which supported his first election. I could go on, but these examples make my point.
If he loses the 10 states in question, all with prior Republican voting histories, he loses the election with a GOP electoral vote total of 290. If he takes Arizona away for the Republicans, the GOP still takes the election with a count of 279 votes.
He is aggressively at odds with the Catholic Church, forcing that institution to offer contraception and abortion to its health benefit packages.
He has written off the middle class white worker, choosing to ignore this monster voting block. He lost that demographic, in 2008, by 10 points. Currently, predictions call for a loss in this category by more than 20 points.
How much harm he has done to the Hispanic vote, is not, yet, fully known, as well. Will this demographic hold him accountable for a record setting pace on deportations coupled with a failed promise to sign comprehensive immigration legislation into law by the end of 2009? Time will tell.
The point of this post: on a good day, Obama will have a very difficult time getting himself re-elected.