Hillary Clinton’s easiest path to an Electoral College majority does not include Ohio, Florida, or North Carolina. Yet those three states all rank at the very top of the list of locales where she has invested the most time and advertising spending, especially in the campaign’s critical closing weeks. …
The Clinton team’s decision to focus so much more attention on states that it wants to win—as opposed to those it believes it needs to win—represents one of the central, if often unremarked upon, choices of the 2016 election. It has allowed her to play offense for most of the general election, while forcing rival Donald Trump to spend most of his energy defending states more indispensable to his strategy than to hers.
But it’s also meant Clinton has devoted little attention, beyond field organizing, to fortifying states where Trump is now making a late push amid the tailwind of tightening national polls. With Trump consolidating traditional Republican voters, Clinton faces the risk that she has overestimated her hold on the places most central to her strategy. CONT.
Ronald Brownstein, The Atlantic