In an interview with FiveThirthyEight.com’s Tom Schaller, Obama’s national voter targeting director Ken Strasma says Montana is his top pick in the country to flip from red to blue in the 2012 election. Here’s the pertinent graf, but the whole interview is worth a read:
We’re a long way from 2012, but if you had to project forward, what will it take for Obama to flip states like Montana and the Dakotas?
I’m very bullish on Montana. It is currently my number one pick to flip in 2012. Energy, land-management and environmental issues are key in Montana and the Dakotas. If, after four years, voters there see that Obama’s policies aren’t the caricatures that Republicans have claimed, we should do quite well.