The California-New Mexico Sandwich
You can call it the 'California-New Mexico Sandwich', or the 'Nevada-Colorado Slider'... but either way, Romney is starting to choke on it.
NY Times on their own Electoral Map has Arizona now 'leaning Romney' and Nate Silver of 538 in his own map (shown above) has a Arizona starting to bleach lighter.
He better keep chewing -- got a lot on his plate and it's getting cold fast.
From the NYTimes:
The politics of Arizona are gradually shifting with its demographics. For now, Republicans believe their party has an advantage in presidential elections, even though they concede the rising number of Hispanic voters could give Democrats an edge. President Obama, who lost by 9 percentage points in Senator John McCain’s home state in 2008, is intrigued by the prospects in Arizona, and his campaign is registering voters and gauging its competitiveness for the fall.
= new reply since forum marked as read
They always gripe about us Californians driving up the cost of their housing, because to us, 140000 for a 3 bedroom 2000 SQ-F house is pretty dirt cheap and we always refuse to negotiate the prices down.
Helena is a decently blue city. Billings is a borderline lost cause. Butte is an enigma, as there are a lot of federal government employees there that hate the government and always vote republican. 
I think it is because a huge part of the state economy is mining related, and the mining companies have people convinced that the fed is an evil beast that needs to be eliminated so that they can just get rid of all regulations, and return to the good old days of company towns, mining scrip, and pinkertons while they mine ginormous holes in the earth.
