WASHINGTON _ Election Day is now less than six months away, but most Americans have set aside a presidential campaign that's been upended by the coronavirus pandemic.
While the coronavirus has tossed the mechanics of politicking in flux for the foreseeable future, leaders in both parties and officials with President Donald Trump's and Joe Biden's campaigns are surveying a relatively stable political battlefield that will be concentrated largely in just about a half dozen states: the former "blue wall" states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the traditional swing states of Florida and North Carolina, and the emerging battleground of Arizona.
The common thread among these six states at the center of the general election map is that they were all carried by Trump in 2016, and that the president currently trails in many of the early polls there, leaving him mostly on defense heading into November.
