Obama campaign’s commitment to Arizona is more than a bluff. Given the convergence of a number of factors, the state is much more winnable than it appears. Ruy Teixeira is the editor of America’s New Swing Region: Changing Politics and Demographics in the Mountain West

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My Comment : This is a wonderful strategy. It energizes non-Whites everywhere and it helps to win the whole SouthWest.

I call this the "Energizer Bunny" strategy. The motto of this bunny is "Keep Going", very similar to Obama's "Forward".

The New Republic

Yes, Obama Can Win Arizona This Year

By Ruy Teixeira

May 15, 2012


Yes, Obama Can Win Arizona This Year


Some excerpts :

There are compelling reasons to believe that GOP performance in Arizona would have been far weaker in 2008 had it not been the home state of the Republican nominee, John McCain. Indeed, Arizona was statistically an outlier, especially for its area of the country, when it came to the polls.

For example, the overall national margin swing toward Obama was around 9.7 points—he won by 7.3 points and Kerry lost by 2.4 points. If the Arizona swing had matched the national swing, Obama would have lost the state by less than a point.

And if Arizona had swung as much as the nearby southwestern states of Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico (all between 14 and 16 points, for an average of 15 points), Obama would have actually won the state by 4 points. So there is a reasonable case to be made that the 2008 election result drastically understates Democratic strength in the state in Presidential elections.

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The composition of the Arizona electorate in 2012 could be 3 to 4 points more minority (chiefly Hispanic) and 3 to 4 points less white working class than in 2008.

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Geographically, the locus of these changes would likely be in the Phoenix metropolitan area, which is 64 percent of the statewide vote. It is this area where minority eligible voters have been growing the fastest and white working class voters declining the most rapidly. And it is also the area in the state that has seen the sharpest shifts toward the Democrats in Presidential elections since 1988.

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