In Any Given Sunday, Al Pacino plays a football coach who inspires his team to win a key game by urging them to see the difference between victory and defeat in the smallest of margins: “On this team we fight for that inch. On this team we tear ourselves and everyone else around us to pieces for that inch. We claw with our fingernails for that inch. Because we know when add up all those inches, that’s gonna make the [bad word] difference between winning and losing!”

This year, the two campaigns may find themselves fighting for that “inch” — for every electoral vote, one at a time.

In particular, one in Nebraska, and one in Maine. These two states allocate their electoral votes geographically, awarding the winner of each congressional district one electoral vote, and the winner of the state-wide vote the remaining two. Nebraska has three districts worth one each and two statewide; Maine has two districts and another pair to the statewide winner.

No one expects Obama to win Nebraska, nor McCain to win Maine. But Team Obama thinks they have a decent shot at winning the congressional district that includes Omaha. And while Maine has been tough sledding for Republicans for the past several presidential races, they have run a bit better in the state’s southern congressional district than the northern one. In the first district in 2004, Kerry won 55 percent to Bush’s 43 percent, but the second district Kerry’s margin was smaller — 51 percent to Bush’s 45 percent. Michael Barone’s Almanac of American Politics describes Maine’s second congressional district thus:

Heavily forested, rough hewn and enormous. It covers the northern three quarters of the state’s acreage; it is the largest congressional district east of the Mississippi, larger than New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine combined. . . . There are several different Maines here: the bays of coastal Maine, with their small fishing towns; the potato fields of far northern Aroostook County; the mill towns on the fast-running streams of western Maine, penned in between mountains where there are more moose than people. . . . Politically, this is protest country: This was Ross Perot’s strongest congressional district in the United States in 1992 and 1996.

Southern/western establishment figures like George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were always going to be a tough sell in this region. John McCain’s “maverick” persona will go over better, and famed moose-hunter Sarah Palin and her snowmobiling husband fit the culture of the region like a glove. The district’s congressman, Democrat Michael Michaud, is a former mill worker who did not attend college, is pro-life, and was rated “A” by the NRA in 2004. Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican, is probably going to win reelection easily, but this should have no more influence on the race than will Democrat Mark Warner’s expected win in Virginia. It’s hard for a Senate candidate to carry the top of the ticket, as the ballots list the presidential race first. Some of the presidential polling in Maine is actually tightening up a bit. SurveyUSA had Obama ahead by 5 points in both southern Maine (which corresponds to Maine’s 1st congressional district) and northern Maine (which corresponds to Maine’s 2nd congressional district). That doesn’t sound like much, but the last time SurveyUSA polled the state, the then-hypothetical Obama-McCain matchup put Obama ahead by 14 percent. Rasmussen puts Obama ahead by 4 statewide, down from 14 percent in August. Nebraska’s second congressional district is the photo-negative of Maine’s second district — a small, densely packed urban and comparatively cosmopolitan district in a state that is reliably safe for the Republican party. Irreplaceable race-watcher Jay Cost has noted Nebraska is a big corn state, and McCain’s opposition to ethanol subsidies may hurt him here. But only about 2.2 percent of the Second District is classified as “rural,” and 66.8 percent of residents are classified as “white collar.” Barone’s assessment gives a hint as to why this might be seen as an attractive longshot for Obama strategists: It is also ethnically diverse: 31 percent of the students in the Omaha public schools are black and 17 percent are Hispanic. . . . Politically, Omaha has long had competitive politics, with Democrats strong on the south side around the stockyards and the northeast and Republicans strong to the west. But as Omaha and Nebraska have boomed, they have become more Republican, and increasingly it is the Republican primary that decides elections here. Overall, the district is 10-percent black and 6 percent Hispanic. The Republican party has a 15,000-vote margin here, a gap that would not be insurmountable for a really vigorous turnout effort that aimed at getting out every youth voter. (On the other hand, Bush beat Kerry by 56,000 votes in 2004. This is what happens when a candidate who doesn’t reflect the local culture doesn’t pay any attention to the state.) If, on Election Night, there is serious discussion of Obama winning this district, he and Michelle are probably already picking out drapes for the Oval Office. – Jim Geraghty writes the Campaign Spot blog on NRO.