Bellwether

My old stomping grounds in Western PA continue to get significant national press in the run up to Election Day. The New York Times, to name one, has been traipsing around Beaver County ... again.

And, Washington County received a mention in the October 27 edition of America, the national Catholic weekly magazine, in an article entitled "New Hues for the Electoral Map."

In the piece, author Robert David Sullivan of the blog "Beyond Red & Blue" places Western Pennsylvania into a region of the country he calls "Chippewa" (along with eastern Ohio, western New York, the West Virginia panhandle and parts of Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and Missouri).

Here's that graph:

A win in Pennsylvania also hinges on McCain’s at least breaking even in the Chippewa part of the state. One bellwether is Washington County, just outside Pittsburgh, which Kerry carried by less than one point in 2004 and where Obama got only 29 percent in this spring’s primary.