Michigan could be key in the presidential election. Here’s why.

Now that we know for certain who the nominees for the two major parties will be, we can ask the obvious question: How does each one of them win the election? As it turns out, Michigan could be key.

The last two presidential elections have been incredibly tight, close enough that the swing of a single state from one party to the other would have sent enough electoral votes from the Republicans to the Democrats. To win the presidency, 270 electoral votes are needed. In 2004, the count was 286 to 252; in 2000, it was 271 to 266.

And in both years, the electoral map laid out in similar ways — Democrats winning the Northeast (including Pennsylvania), the Northern Great Lakes region (Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota) and the West Coast (California, Washington and Oregon). Only New Hampshire and New Mexico changed parties from 2000 to 2004, the former from Republican to Democratic and the latter from Democratic to Republican.

Many states are considered safe for one party or the other. Massachusetts, Oregon, New York and most of the Northeast, for example, are Democratic strongholds and highly unlikely to vote Republican in any election year. Most of the South, on the other hand, can reliably be counted on to vote Republican cycle after cycle. The key to winning the election is to win the swing states, the ones that are divided closely enough that they can go back and forth every four years depending on who is on the ticket.

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Any political junkie can probably give you the list off the top of their head: Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, New Hampshire, Iowa, New Mexico, Missouri. Ohio and Pennsylvania have, of course, been crucial in the last two elections, both times ending up in the Republican column. It’s early in the game, but not too early to look at the polling data from these key swing states to see how the electoral map is shaping up for November. These will be the states where you can expect Sens. McCain and Obama to spend the bulk of their money and time in the next few months.

Real Clear Politics has a very useful page of poll results from every state. They take a whole range of polls, give the results and then average those results to get a well-rounded picture of the data. They also track the results of those polls over time in order to get a feel for how public opinion is trending in each state. We looked at the polling data from the key swing states to see which ones have a reasonable chance of being flipped from Republican to Democratic and vice versa.

Which states could Sen. McCain conceivably flip to his side? There are two that fit the bill. New Hampshire, which only has four electoral votes, and Michigan, which has 17. Recent polls in Michigan show McCain averaging a three-point lead over Obama, a number that is typically within the margin of error and so that race is pretty much a dead heat between the two. New Hampshire likewise shows McCain with a small lead in the polls, an average of 1.4 percentage points. If McCain can flip Michigan to the red column it would make it far more difficult for Obama to construct an electoral map that works in his favor. He would then have to flip several states to the blue column in order to win.

But the data show that there are, in fact, several states where Obama has a legitimate shot of moving from red to blue. The big prize would be Ohio, which has 20 electoral votes, where the polls show Obama with a slight lead, an average of 1.3 percentage points. New Mexico, with five electoral votes, is a tie in recent polls. Nevada, also with five electoral votes, has McCain with a small lead, while Colorado, with nine electoral votes, has Obama with a small lead. All of these states could be up for grabs, along with Iowa, where Obama has held a consistent lead for months. So there are several more states where Obama has a legitimate chance of flipping the 2004 results than where McCain could do so.

But we can also dig a bit deeper than that by looking at primary turnout. Polls showing statistical preferences don’t matter as much as actual turnout at the polls, and this primary season has had the Democrats turning up in massive numbers to vote, compared with the Republicans. In Ohio, more than twice as many Democrats voted than Republicans — 2.2 million to 1 million. In Colorado, they nearly doubled the number of caucus participants. In New Mexico, about 50 percent more Democrats than Republicans voted. In Pennsylvania, the Democrats nearly tripled up the Republicans.

You can look even at states thought to be solidly in the Republican column, like Virginia. In that state, the polls show McCain with a small lead, but in the primaries the Democrats more than doubled up on the Republicans in turnout. In North Carolina, where McCain leads by around five points on average in the polls, the Democrats more than tripled up on the Republican turnout. Should that continue into the general election, it’s conceivable that we might see a major upset in one of those traditionally Republican states.

The key state may well be Michigan. If McCain manages to flip this state’s 17 electoral votes to the Republican column, it becomes much more difficult for Obama to win. In that event, Obama would absolutely have to flip Ohio as well and then get at least two or three of the smaller states to change parties as well. Not inconceivable, of course, but much more difficult to do. We can expect both candidates to spend a great deal of time in Michigan and Ohio over the next few months. Obama has been to Michigan twice in the last two weeks and is coming back on June 16 for a fundraiser in Detroit.