McCain's Florida and Ohio firewalls have been breached

Throughout the primary we were subjected to much bleating from the talking heads that Barack Obama had to win Ohio to win the Presidency and that was in question because of his "problem" with white working class voters. Pennsylvania was less critical but only a bit so and he was still facing the white working class "problem." The other traditional big swing state, Florida, was seen as a lost cause and sure win for John McCain if Obama was the Democratic nominee.

Today we see that that was, of course, all complete bunk. Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight explains,

In Pennsylvania, Obama leads by 12 points -- up from 6 last month. His Ohio lead is 6 points -- he had trailed McCain by 4 points before. And then there is Florida, where Quinnipiac has Obama ahead by 4 points. Barack Obama has never before led a Florida poll -- not against John McCain, nor against Hillary Clinton -- so this is something of a watershed moment.

This isn't surprising, at some point the fundamentals were going to take over - deeply unpopular president, deeply unpopular war, growing economic concerns, tremendous fundraising advantage. All of those fundamentals have always pointed to the election of a Democratic President, no matter who was the nominee from either party. We're finally seeing the post-primary bounce numbers reflected in the polling and all point to major problems for John McCain.

For all of the bloviating about Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania Obama has always had paths to win the Presidency that didn't require a clean sweep of those states or even wins in more than one of those states. The national media and pundits have not yet completely grasped the new map that Democrats are playing off of, with an emphasis on the west and not fighting it out over 100,000 votes in the Rust Belt. Sure the prognosticators pay lip service to this idea but they haven't internalized it and so all of their analysis has so far fallen back on the tired old models that have been in play since the 1970's.

What they were missing was that while Obama had multiple paths to victory, McCain is the one who has no chance of winning the Presidency if he doesn't sweep Ohio and Florida. Those were his firewall states and Obama has just breeched those firewalls. Nate explains further,

If Florida is in play, then John McCain's defense is completely broken; it was the one traditional swing state that always had looked off-limits to Obama. More frustratingly for McCain, he had spent the better part of three days in Florida earlier this month, hoping to raise doubts about Obama among Jewish voters. Although Quinnipiac does not break out the Jewish vote, Obama holds a 61-31 lead in Southeast Florida, where most of the state's Jewish population is concentrated.

Obama's surprisingly strong lead in Ohio isn't any better news for McCain. As recently as a week ago, McCain's strategy looked pretty simple: target Ohio and Michigan, and hope to win one if not both. But now, Ohio looks tough for him, and even if McCain can steal Michigan, Obama has so many other places he can pick up electoral votes -- Virginia, the Mountain West, Iowa, Missouri and now possibly Florida -- that McCain still might have trouble winning a close election.

Obama's national lead is still low in terms of raw numbers but he is beginning to open up a massive lead in the electoral college. Nate is right to call this a watershed moment - we are finally seeing the polls begin to accurately reflect the well-entrenched fundamentals. I'm not sure how much, if at all, the fundamentals can change in the next 138 days.