How the West Was Lost Two regions in this election contain a disproportionate number of battleground states: the Rust Belt (including Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and Wisconsin) and the Interior West (Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada). On that score, each candidate would seem to have a home-region advantage, with Barack Obama representing Illinois in the heart of the Rust Belt region, and John McCain Arizona in the Interior West. Studies have proven the presence of a strong "friends and neighbors" effect in a candidate's home state: They tend to outperform their demographics among voters who know them the best. There is also some evidence that this advantage carries over to the regional level, particularly in the South and in New England, if the candidate has a grasp on the concerns and the ways of thinking most common to the voters in his region. Obama has lived up to his end of the bargain, winning in essentially every state that borders the Land of Lincoln. In Iowa, which John Kerry lost in 2004, but where Obama's victory in the state's January caucuses made his campaign viable, there have been 27 public polls released since the first of the year; Barack Obama has led 26 of them, and was tied with McCain in the other. In Wisconsin, a state that went to Kerry by fewer than 12,000 votes in 2004, Obama has led four of the last five polls by double digits. In Indiana, which hasn't voted Democratic since 1964, Obama has drawn the race to a dead heat. Missouri was on the verge of losing its bellwether status after John Kerry ceded it by seven points, but is now back in the toss-up column, with some recent polling trending toward Obama. But John McCain, by contrast, has made little progress in the West beyond his home state of Arizona. He now trails Obama in Nevada, Colorado, and New Mexico, all three of which went to George Bush in 2004. In spite of early declarations from his campaign that he would fight for Washington, Oregon, and perhaps even California, he never eroded Obama's advantage along the Pacific coast, and is no longer trying. Obama has even led in a few polls in Western states as far-flung as North Dakota, Montana, and--before Sarah Palin's entry into the race-a poll in Alaska. The region that had once appeared to harbor the most potential for McCain might now contain the states that tip the balance of the election toward Obama. Why is McCain performing so poorly in his own backyard? In part, he is fighting a Sisyphean battle against the demographic changes in the region....