Over a week ago I published a diary illustrating a potential scenario for the PA primary, based on Al Giordano's predictions at The Field and jlkenney's predictions here at Daily Kos.

Since that time there has been some movement in the polls suggesting that Obama's campaign in Western and Central PA has had some success in attracting voters. In particular, the Survey USA pollreleased on April 1st suggests that Clinton will not score landslide victories in a number of districts which formed her core support in early to mid March.

For a map, analysis and poll, see below the fold.

As Al Giordano at The Field explains, in PA it really comes down to the delegate math problem. Giordano predicted back on March 12th a 59/44 split of pledged congressonal district delegates in favor of Clinton.

But things are changing quite rapidly, and it's still too early to assess the impact of:

(1) Casey's endorsement of Obama
(2) The Casey/Obama bus trip together from Pittsburgh to Philly
(3) Clinton's loss of credibility because of Tuzla, NAFTA, Ireland
(4) Leahy's call to Clinton to withdraw
(5) Backwash from rich spoiled donor threat to Pelosi

So let’s take a look at the "starting picture" based on Giordano's predictions, qualified by jlkenney’s informative preliminary analysis of the PA congressional districts from March 6.

I've put together some cartograms (schematic maps where the area of district reflects the number of delegates it has) to illustrate what is at stake where. Since the geographically huge central PA districts have many fewer delegates than the geographically tiny urban and suburban districts, the cartogram gives a clearer picture of the balance of strength.

As explained here the delegates to the PA Democratic primary are apportioned by districts with the number of delegates allotted depending on the number of registered Democrats in the district (at the time of apportionment, unfortunately not including the many newly registered voters).

This means that the number of delegates per district varies considerably, ranging from 9 for district 2 (Philadelphia west) and to a mere 3 for the district 9 ("Altoona").

Because the geographic size of a district has nothing to do with its number of delegates an ordinary map can be deceptive. We are all familiar with the vast expanse of red states in the middle of the US whose collective voice hardly totals that of California and New York alone. For this reason I thought it would be useful to see a map with each district's size scaled to its number of delegates.

It's time to start thinking very carefully about strategies for the general with Obama vs. McCain and to just forget Hillary. (She'd make a great running mate for McCain, but otherwise I don't think it will happen.)

Can Obama win without the "big swinging three": PA, OH and FL?

As a resident of Pennsylvania whose mother is from Ohio I feel I know these two states at a gut level. And after so many indications of white fear gripping voters in Ohio and rural Pennsylvania, and with possibly little support from the Latino vote in Florida, Obama's chances of winning the big swinging three from McCain seem to me hardly reliable. After the depressing electoral shenanigans in Ohio and Florida in 2004 can we even rely on those states to turn blue even if Obama wins there? Is the impoverishment and concomitant dumbing down of OH and PA so advanced that voters in these states have no choice but to join their southern cousins in the illusion that McCain will do anything for them? Has the nation’s demographics made a new shift? Suppose the answer is yes.

Then an important question really is: can Obama win even without OH, PA and FL?