Electoral College Politics, these early days

Looking at electoral maps, such as the one on Huffington Post, it looks like the Obama campaign needs to focus on

Michigan
Florida
Virginia
Iowa
all of which are toss ups

and, to shore up losable current leads
Ohio
Pennsylvania

which are must-wins

and
Coloradowhich is a sure-would-be-nice-to-have

Some other states where he's currently winning, like Wisconsin and Minnesota are probably less critical, but nonetheless worth campaigning in.

The numbers show that if Obama can carry Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania he will almost certainly win the election. Without Michigan he'd have to carry a couple of the other current toss-ups to be assured of victory, or just Florida would do it. Of course the experts in the campaign have gamed every possible scenario and will focus spending like a laser as the campaign unfolds (as will the Rightists, of course, but at this point, their job will be more problematical, which is music to my ears to be able to say. What isn't music to my ears is that they will probably have at least 50% more money than us to spend).

Unfortunately for those of us who live in the far west, (Calif., Oregon, Washington and even Nevada), both campaigns will probably ignore us entirely (even though California alone is about 12.5% of the nation), because we are going blue, almost no matter what. (Which is a good thing).