Wisconsin

Wisconsin

|| 51.0  ||  2,796,147  ||  136,483  || || John Kerry (D) || 48.5 || 2,659,664 || || ||   50.0    ||    2,351,209    ||    165,019    ||  || Al Gore (D) || 46.5 || 2,186,190 || || || 47.5  ||  2,148,222  ||  288,339  || ||  40.2  ||  1,984,942  ||  90,059  || || George H.W Bush (R) || 38.3 || 1,894,310 || || || 55.0  ||  2,416,549  ||  476,920  || || Michael Dukakis (D) || 41.0 || 1,939,629 ||
 * ** Year ** || ** Candidates ** || ** Percentage ** || ** Popular Vote ** || ** Margin of Victory ** ||
 * 2004 || || || || ||
 * || George W. Bush (R)
 * 2000 || || || || ||
 * ||   George W. Bush (R)
 * 1996 || || || || ||
 * || Bill Clinton (D)
 * || Bob Dole (R) || 41.0 || 1,859,883 || ||
 * 1992 || || || || ||
 * || Bill Clinton (D)
 * 1988 || || || || ||
 * || George H.W. Bush (R)

2000
 * || Democrat || Republican ||
 * 2000 || 1,242,987 (Gore) || 1,237,279 ||
 * 2004 ||  ||   ||


 * || Dem || Rep || Margin ||
 * 2000 || 1,242,987 (Gore) || 1,237,279 (Bush) || Gore by 5500 ||
 * 2004 || 1,489,504 (Kerry) || 1,478,210 (Bush) || Kerry by 11,000 ||

//Wisconsin is the near-perfect microcosm of America's political divisions. In 2000, barely more than 5,000 votes (out of more than 2.5 million) separated Bush from Al Gore. Its House delegation has four Republicans, four Democrats. A Democrat is governor, but the GOP holds more seats in the legislature. And now, no one can predict whether Bush will reverse his narrow 2000 loss or see Kerry grab the state. The president led most polls after the two conventions, but several now show Kerry scrambling back to achieve a statistical tie. With saturation-level television and multiple candidate visits (Kerry was in the state on Thursday, Friday and Saturday and will be back on Monday), it comes down to a ground war captained by two of the most highly regarded operatives either side possesses. Jobs are a real concern here, even though the economy is perkier than in most neighboring states. Here, as elsewhere in the upper Midwest, Bostonian Kerry has struggled to make any kind of personal connection with Democratic constituencies. He has used John Edwards, who gave him a scare in the February primary, to break the emotional ice and on Thursday brought in Bruce Springsteen to liven up a massive student rally near the University of Wisconsin in Madison. A racially polarizing mayoral race in Milwaukee left scars that have been slow to heal in the Democratic base, and no one would be surprised to see Bush roll up a big enough suburban and rural vote to put this highly valued electoral prize in his column this time.//

(this is pasted from the [|Washington Post's analysis of Wisconsin in 2004])

I had been thinking about states individually, but this article from the Chicago Tribune made me realize that Obama will get some of his supporters in his home state of Illinois to cross the border and help with the campaign in neighboring Wisconsin, since he already pretty much has Illinois wrapped up.

Here's a quote from the article:

//Obama's allies in Illinois have been promising to do all they can to drag Wisconsin across the Democratic finish line, as they have in the past two presidential elections, when the state went Democratic by less than a percentage point. The fact that Wisconsin was John Kerry's narrowest win last time around is part of the reason McCain has targeted Wisconsin, said Curt Reithel, chair of political science at UW La Crosse.// //"We like getting all the attention," Reithel. "The electoral college does create a persistent and real distortion in the distribution of campaign attention and resources, which works to the benefit of states like Wisconsin."// //At the Cook County Democratic Party's annual banquet in Chicago last week, Mayor Daley and Sen. Dick Durbin exhorted to Illinois Democrats to spend some time ringing doorbells in Wisconsin, since Obama has Illinois pretty much sewed up.// //"Take care of all these local races, but then we realize we need to go out and work hard throughout the surrounding states," Durbin said. "If you can take a day -- Saturday, Sunday, Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa -- reach out, bring other people to work on this campaign."// //At least, Daley urged, make phone calls to the swing states. "All of you, your relatives, friends ... your sons and daughters go to school someplace else ... [voters] need a personal call," he said.// //Kenosha, Wis., County Democratic Chair Bryan Miller said the troops are already arriving from Illinois to help turn out the vote here.// //"A majority of the volunteers we're going to get on Election Day are probably from Illinois," he said. "We have a six-line phone bank. We just doubled our office space. We've been doing a lot of canvassing. We're never one to turn a volunteer down."//

source: http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/obama/1195850,obama100108.article