Will Republican Party make a play for PA in 2016?

[I_Like_Spam]

Originally Posted by Duderino

If I were the GOP, I'd hardly want to waste my limited resources on Pennsylvania (whose largest media market is pretty expensive: Philadelphia), especially as other Republican states become more competitive (North Carolina, Virginia, and Georgia), forcing the party to increasingly defend their current turf.

The problem with that strategy is that they would have to sweep the board and might still not have enough votes to actually win.

Winning is the name of the game, no one is going to belong to a political party that doesn't stand a chance of victory and actually implementing policy.

It would be a better strategy to actually increase the number of Republican voters by convincing electors that the opposition is a failure and they have better ideas.

[PacoMartin]

Originally Posted by Duderino

If I were the GOP, I'd hardly want to waste my limited resources on Pennsylvania (whose largest media market is pretty expensive: Philadelphia), especially as other Republican states become more competitive (North Carolina, Virginia, and Georgia), forcing the party to increasingly defend their current turf.

Mitt Romney beat John McCain's list of wins by North Carolina, Indiana, and 2nd district of Nebraska. Which is interesting because even before the Republicans picked a candidate, pundits had been predicting that NC, IN, and (2nd NE) were going to be lost by the Republicans because of unhappiness.

It was almost as if Romney's campaign was irrelevant.

So defending their current turf is a never going to give them a chance at winning the presidency. Even if the Republicans win all three of the battle ground states of Florida, Ohio, and Virginia they will still need 4 more electoral college votes.

As PA is the next closest state, you would think that it would be worth a campaign.

States where the margin of victory was under 5% (60 electoral votes):
Florida, 0.88%
Ohio, 2.98%
Virginia, 3.87%

States/districts where the margin of victory was between 5% and 7%
Colorado, 5.37%
Pennsylvania, 5.39%
New Hampshire, 5.58%
Iowa, 5.81%
Nevada, 6.68%
Wisconsin, 6.94%

Originally Posted by Duderino

Overall, Pennsylvania has been described as "fool's gold" for the GOP, due to its supposed potential to vote for a Republican candidate but consistently voting Democratic since the late 1980s. It's a bid absurd to call it a "swing state" at this point -- Democratic-leaning still means it's in the Democratic column. The 5-10% margins for the Democrats in the past two elections don't exactly lend themselves to much competitiveness.

I like the term "fool's gold" since you would think that it would be worth pursuing. The last election was 51.97% Democratic and 46.59% Republican which is, as you suggested 5%.

But that was without any campaign at all. Which is back to my original question. What would it take (if anything) to start a campaign?

Maybe there is nothing. The Republican strategy may return to trying to secure FL, VA, and OH and some smaller states.