Get ready: Every day until the election we are going to be bombarded by misleading poll numbers and predictions that focus on the popular vote rather than what matters, electoral votes. Think of it in baseball terms: electoral votes are runs, popular votes are hits. Basically, candidates can’t leave anyone on base—and that means winning battleground states. And you can’t win a battle without a strategy, and intel.

So for the first in our Daily Beast series on these critical election states, let’s start with the single most important battleground: Pennsylvania and its 19 electoral votes.

Why Pennsylvania? I mean, beyond the fact I’m from Philadelphia. Being from Philly is like going to Harvard—it gets namedropped in the first 10 seconds of any conversation. I actually once heard a Starbucks barista ask a customer for his name to put on a cup of pumpkin spice latte and the person said “Bob, Harvard 86.” The barista said, “amazing, Harvard, Death of Western Civilization major, class of 2018.”

But I digress. The reason to start with my home state is that everyone knows that whoever wins Pennsylvania wins the White........

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