Keep an eye on Pennsylvania Congressional races if you want an indication of how the rest of the country will go this year, argues columnist Salena Zito. There could be as many as 11 competitive House races in the state's 19 Congressional districts. And don't forget Arlen Specter's U.S. Senate seat, too.From Zito's latest column in The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:
In the past decade, Pennsylvania has been a Democrat-leaning presidential battleground. It went for Gore (51-46), Kerry (51-48) and Obama (55-44).Read the full column at the link below:
"Putting these numbers in perspective, the state tends to vote about 4 percentage points more for the Democratic nominee than the nation as a whole does," says Lara Brown, Villanova University professor.
Democrats have been increasingly confident that trend will continue, given 2006 midterm and 2008 general election wins. But change can come quickly.
Brown says a few Keystone State congressional seats Democrats hoped to win (districts 6 and 15) or were confident of keeping (7, 10 and 11) are beginning to trend against them.
RealClearPolitics' average for the generic ballot favors Republicans by 3 points.
If that's accurate, Brown explains, "Then in Pennsylvania what you can infer is that among likely voters, Democrats are only running ahead of Republicans by about 1 percentage point."
In other words, the state is extremely competitive and may -- depending on primary races -- again seem like a political "ground zero" come October.
Political thermometer - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
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