Mark Halperin offers a clue in his answer to one of TIME’s latest “Big Questions”:

Where will the race be won and lost? It will be very hard for Obama to repeat his ’08 wins in Florida and Indiana, and he has challenges in Ohio, Virginia and North Carolina. An Obama landslide seems out of the question at the moment, but he can still pull off a squeaker. As he has said, he’s currently the underdog in this contest.