Sure Missouri has only picked one losing candidate since the onset of the 20th century (Adlai Stevenson in 1956). And yes, Ohio has an equally impressive resume of only two losses since 1892 (Thomas Dewey in 1944 and Richard Nixon in 1960).
But there's one bellwether state that's often overlooked. I was surprised to discover that the only state to have a lifetime percentage of over 90% in choosing presidents is New Mexico.
Yes, it is one of the latest states admitted to the union (the 47th state, admitted in 1912) but nevertheless has participated in the last 23 presidential elections, enough of a sample size to give it a good deal of credibility.
Just how good is New Mexico at predicting the outcomes of U.S. Presidential elections? New Mexico is correct 95.65% of the time. That's astounding. (Note: I should make clear that New Mexico voted for Al Gore in 2000, giving it further credibility. This 2000 vote has been added to the "correct" column because, well, Al Gore did win after all.) But even if you count 2000 as a loss, New Mexico is still right 91.3% of the time.. way ahead of any other U.S. state.
New Mexico's sole loss was its 1976 vote for incumbent Gerald Ford over Jimmy Carter. Though, this one loss should not in any way diminish the credibility of New Mexico. This was one of the closest elections in U.S. history and New Mexico was decided by less than 2.5% of the vote. Another tidbit: in the 1976 presidential election, Gerald Ford won more states than any losing candidate in the history of the United States by carrying 27 states. New Mexico's one loss was not by much.
But why am I bringing this to your attention? First of all, I think it's interesting as hell.. since not many people think that New Mexico is a microcosm of the United States (it has the third largest percentage of Native Americans and the largest percentage of Hispanics, for starters). But also, I want to direct your attention to two recent polls.
A May 14th Rasmussen poll has Obama beating McCain 50% to 41%. That's a good thing, but I don't think that's entirely accurate. After all, McCain is a senator right next door, and historically, New Mexico presidential elections are considerably closer than that.
But look at this SurveyUSA poll that came out just a few days ago:
OBAMA 44%
MCCAIN 44%
SurveyUSA has been pretty reliable in its polling, with a few exceptions. But I bet these numbers are about accurate. Richardson's endorsement undoubtedly helped, at least a little bit. But it's my opinion that Barack needs to concentrate on New Mexico.
Put it this way, assuming Barack's map is similar to the Kerry 2004 map (with the exceptions of McCain winning New Hampshire and Barack winning Iowa and Colorado) and Barack wins New Mexico, he can then lose Ohio, Missouri, Nevada, Virginia, and Indiana (all of which are currently either slightly Democratic, a dead-heat, or slightly Republican) and still amass 269 electoral votes. This would result in a "tie" and then be sent to the House of Representatives where Barack would surely be the victor because the party makeup in the state delegations is a Democratic majority.
Of course, I'd feel a lot better if Obama got a majority of the electoral votes, but it seems to me that New Mexico will still be quite important.