Hillary: Changing the Map

Fascinating post at Open Left by Chris Bowers. He has taken the most recent head-to-head general election polls to illustrate the invalidity of the "Hillary is unelectable" point and made an electoral map out of these polls. They show huge gains by Senator Clinton over Kerry and Gore, when she is matched against either of the two GOP frontrunners, Guiliani and Romney. She wins by massive margins.

Guiliani is well known nationally, and Romney is not. Therefore, I think that in the Clinton vs. Romney map, the results, while accurate as of this moment, overstate the eventual electoral outcome. I don't think that Hillary would win, for example, Mississippi & Alabama. Based on long term electoral trends, very early polling, and in the case of Arkansas, past residency, I do think that it is more likely than not that Hillary is likely to flip the following previously red states:

(Based in order of my certainty, which is worth basically nothing)

Arkansas
New Mexico
Iowa
Florida
Nevada
Ohio
Colorado
Virginia
Missouri.

Which is enough to win the general election with scores of electoral votes to spare. I think that Obama or Edwards would probably produce largely the same result with the following differences:

* Neither would carry Arkansas.
* Obama would probably several of these based on his propensity to say things that would be easily exploited by the Republican filth machine.
* Edwards might bring North Carolina into play. He might not, based on his performance as a VP candidate in 2004.

Interesting map, though, based on early polling.