About two weeks ago, Barack Obama made a bit of a flub on the campaign trail in Oregon, saying that he had visited 57 states to that point while campaigning. Of course what he meant to say was that he had visited 47 states. Leaving aside Obama's mixup, I think there's something interesting there. Since making those comments, Obama has hit his 48th state -- South Dakota -- hitting each of the lower contiguous states, leaving just Hawaii, where he was born and grew up, and Alaska, where he has a reasonable shot of competing, to be visited. For reference, Obama has plans to visit both states, meaning that in not too long of a time he will have hit all 50 states in the union.
This is a fairly remarkable accomplishment. Obama has already announced a 50-state strategy, but actually campaigning in every state -- even if just for a day or two -- more than five months away from election day is nevertheless a notable and positive development. Does campaigning in every state mean that every state will be competitive in November? No. Does this mean that there's value in campaigning in non-competitive states to the detriment of hitting the more competitive ones? Of course not.
At the same time, there is little evidence that having campaigned in nearly every state has hurt Obama. Indeed, Obama holds a pledged delegate lead and an overall delegate lead -- just 53 delegates away from the magic number of 2,026 -- not only despite having hit the lower 48, but perhaps also, at least in part, because of having hit them.
Going forward, I don't think it would necessarily be a great idea for Obama to hit all 50 states again between the convention and election day. As Chris Dodd said in an interview with MyDD back in August at the Yearly Kos convention in Chicago, "I'd be careful about any candidate saying, 'I promise to campaign in all 50 states.' [...] I wouldn't want someone going off the last week in the campaign because they made a promise in Chicago to be in South Dakota, with all due respect to South Dakota, and, say, Mississippi, because there are three states they haven't gotten to and we need you."
Nevertheless, there is value in hitting states that haven't seen a serious presidential campaign in years past -- including, perhaps, Mississippi, where the Democrats seriously overperformed in a special election this month and which could be on the map if targeted in a strategic way. Putting new states on the map can stretch the GOP thin, making it more difficult for John McCain to win in November. This generally means campaigning in closer states like Virginia -- or New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado, where Obama will campaign this week -- states that the GOP carried in recent Presidential elections but which appear to be trending noticeably towards the Democrats (and, more importantly, where Obama already polls close to McCain). Yet devoting even a few days between now and election day to hitting places like Omaha (where one or two electoral votes may be in play) and Anchorage (Obama is possibly within striking distance in Alaska, particularly if Bob Barr is on the ballot in the state) and even Mississippi would not necessarily be poor investment of time, either.
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