As we all relearned in 2000, the person who gets the most votes nationwide is not necessarily the person who wins the election. The electoral college has a math, and a sort of logic, of its own. There is a great website, "Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections [1]" that allows you to look at the electoral college breakdown in previous elections, including state popular vote results for each year. Easy to use, this is the best way to get a sense of the partisan history of the different swing states.