It’s complicated.

Pennsylvania is a “purple” state that must go Democrat blue instead of Republican red for Barack Obama to win the November election. John McCain does not need Pennsylvania to win the White House, but Obama sure does.

Matt Lebo, a political science professor at the State University of New York’s Stony Brook campus, says that even with new states in play for Democrats, a winning electoral map for Obama without the Keystone State is difficult to envision. “If Obama were to lose Pennsylvania, it would be because he didn't appeal enough to her voters, even less so than John Kerry” in 2004, he says.

Lebo reasons that losing Pennsylvania in the fall points to larger problems. “Whatever it would be that would hurt him to the point of losing there, would also hurt Obama elsewhere, especially in Michigan and Ohio.”

University of Virginia professor Larry Sabato explains that America’s political landscape is like playing with 50 pieces of a complicated puzzle: “There are thousands of potential combinations of electoral votes, with over 80 ways the Electoral College can tie, and about 30 reasonable combinations that produce a tie.”

Sabato says that if Obama is losing Pennsylvania going into November, it will be a bad sign for his candidacy. “That would suggest that other, even more competitive states may be going to the Republicans.”

Pennsylvania has grown comfortable in her role as a battleground state. A high-roller in both the 2000 and 2004 general elections, the Keystone State became the center of the political universe this spring with the unprecedented six-week primary race between Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Clinton won on sheer political tenacity and a lot of sideline heavy-lifting by Gov. Ed Rendell’s political machine. Of the state’s 67 counties, Obama won just seven.

“One of the main reasons that Barack Obama did not do well here in the primary is that he is a ‘change’ candidate and we just don’t embrace change,” says Philadelphia Democratic analyst Larry Ceisler.

Ceisler, a Western Pennsylvania native, says most Pennsylvanians are born and die in the state and, “even if we lose our jobs, we stay here.”

He says Obama faces some obstacles among state machine politicians. For example, “he did not play the street-money game in Philadelphia and there is resentment for that. … He probably did not get a good black vote because of that.” Continued...