Obama for... Alaska?

Somebody's optimistic. 

During a session with reporters at the Democratic National Committee's Washington, D.C. headquarters this afternoon, Barack Obama campaign manager David Plouffe made a pretty interesting prediction: Obama could win Alaska in November. I wasn't there, but I imagine Plouffe's projection was greeted with the sound of every hack in the room scribbling "crazy" in his notebook. And underlining it. Twice.

For those of you who can't remember as far back as 2000--or don't have access to CNN's handy exit polls--to describe Alaska as a red state would be something of an understatement. Blood-soaked is more like it (at least when it comes to presidential elections). Only one Dem has ever won the state: LBJ. He also won 43 others. In 2000, George W. Bush clobbered Al Gore by 31 points in the Last Frontier, and four years later preserved his dominant record by routing challenger John Kerry 61 to 36. The only state in recent memory to change columns by swinging more than 25 points from one election to the next was Arkansas, where Bush beat Al Gore by five percent four years after Bill Clinton won by 27. But Arkansas was Clinton's home state.

So Plouffe is nuts, right? Surprisingly, not so much. The math is pretty simple. Only 311,808 Alaskans voted for president in 2004--meaning that Bush's 25-point margin of victory represented a mere 80,000 raw votes. And Obama is already outperforming Kerry and Gore on the ground, trailing McCain by a mere four percent in the latest Rasmussen poll. If you assume that turnout will hold steady, that translates to a deficit of about 12,500 ballots. Given that Obama will likely outspend McCain by more $100 million overall and still has a solid organization leftover from the Feb. 5 caucuses--unlike his rival--scaring up 12,500 votes doesn't seem, in principle at least, like a particularly unattainable goal. As the New Republic's Noam Scheiber writes, " Plus there's the added bonus (as in Georgia) of Bob Barr, whose Libertarian bid should resonate in a rugged, laissez-faire state that's famously fond of third-party candidates. (In 2000, Ralph Nader hit double digits in Alaska--and nowhere else.) According to Plouffe, "we think Barr can get 6, 7, 8 percent." That alone would trigger an Obama-McCain tie. It'd be up to Obama's precinct-level operation to do the rest--*which, as the commenters note, is not as resistant to Democrats locally as recent presidential returns would imply.*

Ultimately, though, Plouffe's prediction is as much about making the cash-strapped McCain sweat as picking up electoral votes. Alaska only has three, and Obama is hardly a sure thing. Then again, today's presentation also highlighted Montana and North Dakota--two other low-population red states where Obama is planning to compete. That would bring his grand total of "Big Sky" EVs to nine --a potentially decisive number. So maybe McCain should be sweating after all. And maybe we reporters should be crossing out those "crazy's" in our notebooks and writing "watch Alaska" instead.

*Updated. 

UPDATE, June 26: Looks like Obama plans to walk the walk. From the Anchorage Daily News:

"That is the plan -- we are pretty sure he's going to come at the end of the summer," said Kat Pustay, who was named Wednesday as Obama's Alaska director. Obama is opening a campaign office in Anchorage with paid staff, although Pustay said she didn't know yet just how big the operation will be here. "The campaign in Chicago is saying this is a battleground state so we're going to get resources," she said.

As Ben Smith writes, this "marks a real commitment to that state -- though the key test will be where he goes in October." We'll be watching...