GOP: Iowa win won't be easy for Bush

[Judi Lynn]

GOP: Iowa win won't be easy for Bush
By THOMAS BEAUMONT
Register Staff Writer
02/23/2004

Little has improved for President Bush's political fortunes in Iowa since voters handed him one of his narrowest defeats of the historically close 2000 election.

In that election, Bush lost by 4,144 votes, roughly two per precinct. Since then, Republican registration has slipped, and an Iowa poll shows the president trailing John Kerry, the leading Democratic candidate in the state.

Bush was absent from Iowa during all of 2003, while Democrats campaigning for the leadoff nominating caucuses spent millions of dollars on ads attacking his record.

"He's behind, it's true," former Iowa Republican Party Chairman Mike Mahaffey said Friday. "I wouldn't make any prediction as to whether or not the president is going to carry Iowa at this point. I think it's going to be in play."
(snip/...)

http://desmoinesregister.com/news/stories/c4789004/23606837.html

[IADEMO2004]

1. Not enough billionaires in Iowa to carry the state.

[private_ryan]

2. how does this help us?

we won it in 2004. We need to pick up an extra state and keep the ones we won.

[David__77]

4. The midwest will be key.

Every state "helps" in the sense that nothing is guaranteed. While it's useful to think in terms of carrying individual states, I think that we do have to more broadly focus on regions. The midwest needs to be relatively strong for the Democratic nominee: Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa--we need to expand into Missouri, Ohio especially, and maybe even Indiana (VP Bayh?).

[dusty64]

3. Many of the blue states

were close due to the nader factor, I do not expect that to be true this time. Quite a few red states are winnable, Nevada, Arizona, Missouri, Ohio, New Hampshire, West Virginia, Tennessee, Louisiana, Arkansas, and to a lesser extent Florida (the fix seems to be in).