Salon: 2 Southern states are battleground states

For all of the naysayers who say the South isn't important in the presidential elections process, a panel of experts says that Georgia and Virginia are battleground states this year, according to Salon magazine. Four other states in the "swing" states are: Colorado, New Hampshire, Ohio and Michigan.

Here's some of what the panelists said:

Democratic pollster Paul Maslin: "Kerry lost by 16 points in Georgia. If Barack Obama wins Georgia, he won't be worrying about the Electoral College on election night. It'll be a 400-vote Electoral College landslide."

Andres Ramirez, vice president for Hispanic Programs and director of the Hispanic Strategy Center at the progressive think tank NDN: "I think Virginia is a much more likely state, especially because you have Jim Webb, who just won, and you have Mark Warner on the ballot. ... But the fact that he's on the ballot again [as a US Senate candidate] means Hispanics will play a much larger role in Virginia. And again, we need to recall, Virginia was one of the few states where Obama actually won the Hispanic vote during the primary. He's incredibly popular with that community there; it's increasingly getting more active. There's a significant African-American population in Virginia as well, and so I think with that combination of facts you have a trending state. You have Governor Kaine in there, you have Mark Warner on the ballot and you have Obama's appeal to the African-Americans and Hispanics. I think Virginia is one of the states that was red that will likely benefit Obama this election."

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