John McCain's team recently published a strategy presentation on his website which contains a breakdown of how they perceive the electoral battleground shaping up.
I find this map rather odd, both for what it includes and for what it excludes.
They list no fewer than 24 states as battlegrounds.
Their blue state targets are:
NH, MI, WI, MN, PA, WA, OR, NJ, ME, CT, DE
Their red state vulnerables are:
IA, NM, OH, CO, NV, MO, FL, AR, KY, TN, WV, AZ, LA
I'm not going to say too much about the blue states listed as you would expect them to be trying to push it out a bit to encourage the troops. Maine comes up presumably because, like Nebraska, it splits its electoral votes; they think CT could be vulnerable because of a "Lieberman effect"; and as for DE - don't ask me...!
Much more interesting and weirder, though, is their list of battleground red states. You would expect the "usual suspects" of IA, NM, OH, CO, NV, MO and FL to be up there. But they also still seem to think the states of WV, AR, KY and TN are battlegrounds despite Obama's poor showing there in the primaries. Even more surprisingly, they have McCain's home state of Arizona listed as vulnerable, and perhaps most unlikely of all Louisiana (maybe fearing a Katrina backlash?).
But this begs the question: if they are including states like AR, AZ and LA where I really have trouble seeing Obama being competitive, why are they excluding (and branding "safe Republican") so many states where the evidence suggests Obama has a decent shot? The most glaring omission is VA, but if they're going to include states like AZ and LA then why on earth are they not including IN, NC, GA, AK, and NE (like Maine with split electoral college votes)?
Perhaps this electoral map is a clever decoy to fool Democrats into attacking in the wrong places?! If not, it suggests that McCain's team may not be much of a match for Plouffe and Axelrod.