Without making any predictions, the Obama campaign thinks it has a chance in traditionally-Republican Sarasota County, Florida, the Sarasota Herald Tribune reports. The reason this idea is raising eyebrows is because no Democratic presidential candidate has won the county since Franklin Roosevelt in 1944.

"If we win Sarasota, we will win Florida," Obama's Florida director Steve Schale told the Herald Tribune.

Sarasota -- along with neighboring Manatee County -- has grown rapidly over the last half-century since FDR won the county, and has remained a Republican stronghold until recently. In 2006, Sarasota's 13th Congressional District provided one of the closest races in the country, with the 369-vote margin not decided for weeks after the November election. Although Republican Vern Buchanan won the district, he lost Sarasota County despite a substantial Republican voter registration advantage. (Reid Wilson takes a look this morning at the district's grudge match this year over at Politics Nation).

Also in 2006, former secretary of state and 13th district congresswoman Katherine Harris lost the county by some 16 points in her bid for the Senate, though now-Gov. Charlie Crist carried it by double digits.

The state House elections were extremely close: in the two districts with candidates from both major parties, Sarasota elected one Republican and one Democrat, both by narrow margins.

"When you look at the trend lines over the last four years, you can really see it," said Schale, per the Herald Tribune. "I can't say right now whether we are going to win Sarasota or not. But what I do know is that we have an opportunity to grow on what has happened."