The Breakdown for Sept. 30.

The big change today is that Florida has moved back into a tie. Florida has always been close, but it seems to be moving towards the Obama. This is a very big deal, since McCain must win Florida if he wants to have any shot of winning the election.

Other than FL moving, everything else stayed unchanged today.

If the election were held today and...	Obama	McCain
...all McCain <5% went to Obama	375	163
...all Obama <5% went to McCain	250	288
Shift since yesterday:	+0	-0
Shift this week:	+21	-52

(See this post for an explanation of these numbers.)

The Republican Party Skewers Themselves Over Bailout Vote

(With a little help from Rachel Maddow)

Florida is McCain's must win state.

Here's the one to watch on Election night... If Obama takes Florida, then McCain has virtually no realistic chance of winning the election. Using the simulator at 270towin.com, if you set FL to Obama but leave all other swing states unallocated, McCain only has a 2% chance of winning. Even if you give McCain MO, OH, VA, NC and IN and leave all other states unallocated, McCain only has a 16% chance of winning if Obama takes FL. It doesn't matter so much to Obama, though. If you give McCain FL, but leave the other states unallocated, Obama still has a 78% chance of winning (and that number increase rapidly as soon as you give Obama a few of the other states). Considering that fivethirtyeight.com currently has Obama winning Florida 59% of the time, If I were McCain I probably wouldn't leave the state before election day.

The Breakdown for Setp. 29

No changes at all since yesterday according to Electora-Vote-com. fivethirtyeight.com now places Obama's odds at 80.5% and gives the dems a 16% chance of taking a 60-seat majority in the senate.

If the election were held today and...	Obama	McCain
...all McCain <5% went to Obama	375	163
...all Obama <5% went to McCain	250	288
Shift since yesterday:	+0	-0
Shift this week:	+21	-52

(See this post for an explanation of these numbers.)

Dem's Senate Hopes Better Than Ever

FiveThirtEight.com now places the the Dem's chances of taking a filibuster-proof 60-seat majority in the senate at 16%, the best it's been all year. The last two years has been proof that control of congress is nearly useless if the minority party is willing to put their party before the good of the country and filibuster any bill regardless of it's merits. Unless the Dems make that 60-seat magic number, expect that pattern to continue.

The Breakdown for Sept 28th

Not much action today. CO firms back up for Obama while Louisiana does the same for McCain. All polling data is still from before the debate.

If the election were held today and...	Obama	McCain
...all McCain <5% went to Obama	375	163
...all Obama <5% went to McCain	250	288
Shift since yesterday:	+0	-0
Shift this week:	+21	-52

(See this post for an explanation of these numbers.)

Fivethirtyeight.com has Obama at 78.5%

FiveThirtyEight.com is probably my favorite polling site. It's a poll junkie's paradise, with all kinds of useful breakdowns and great analysis of the numbers. It also holds the distinction of being the only poll tracking site to accurately call the outcome of the 2004 election, so he has a track record backing him up.

Anyway, today they put Obama's odds of winning the election at 78.5%. I'm not sure if that's his best day ever, but it's certainly the best since at least early September. This is based on pre-debate polling, so it could change, but it's still a good place to be this close to the election.

The Breakdown for Sept. 27

Only minor changes in todays numbers. An ARG poll shows McCain with a 3 point lead in CO, so averaged with the other polls, that moves it back into the weak Obama column. That poll seems to be an outlier, since the previous four polls on EV.com and five polls on fivethirtyeight.com all show Obama with a sizeable lead.

One new feature was added to the site yesterday, but I didn't have time to mention it. I'm including the banner from Electoral-Vote.com in each day's post, and it's linked to that day's map on the EV.com site. This adds a mini-map for the day, the day's top-level numbers and a link for more detailed analysis all in one tiny space. Becuase that banner is auto-generated and not saved on EV.com, I have to manually save a local copy. That means that I have no way to go back and add them on days before the 25th.

If the election were held today and...	Obama	McCain
...all McCain <5% went to Obama	375	163
...all Obama <5% went to McCain	250	288
Shift since yesterday:	+0	+9
Shift this week:	+21	-35

(See this post for an explanation of these numbers.)

McCain didn't lose the debate

So what happened tonight? I'm not a pundit, just a political junkie with strong opinions, but here's my take: McCain clearly didn't win tonight's debate, but it's hard to argue that he lost it either. While he often looked like a deer caught in headlights, he did generally seem reasonably competent. He made no gaffes that were so obvious that he would be called on them by the MSM. His misrepresentations were small enough that he won't get called on them too broadly, and he didn't lose his temper (though there was a moment or two where he looked like he would). Since we know that it isn't who won the debate, but who exceeded their expectations that matters, McCain will clearly be credited in the media as the victor. McCain's stunt with canceling the debate will work in his favor in the media, since they will have forgotten it by tomorrow even though it worked to help lower his expectations. Hopefully the voters won't have such a short memory, even though I have no reason to believe that they won't.

Anyway, as of tomorrow, McCain will likely be declared the winner by the media. In the meantime, here are some pre-pundit numbers from CBS News: 500 uncommitted voters asked who won tonights debate: 40% said Obama, 22% said McCain and 38% said a draw.

Oh, one more thing... McCain starts in a MUCH weaker position right now, so he really needs to dominate these debates. McCain has a long way to go to make up his standing in the polls, so tonights debate performance probably won't help much.

UPDATE: More numbers from the CBS poll

2004 Poll Strength Chart

In the comments of today's breakdown, M. Swanson made this observation:

The 2004 and the 2008 races both start our with long leads (a nice sine wave). It will be interesting if we see a chaotic lead change in the last 40 days that we say in 2004.

http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2008/Pres/ec_graph-2008.html

That comment spurred me to do something that I've been meaning to do for a while, namely chart the 2004 polls:


There are a couple things to note in that chart. First, Bush was actually ahead for the majority of the final two months of the campaign, though it did swing back and forth a bit. Second, while Kerry had slightly deeper support than Bush did overall, it was no where near as strong as Obama's is. In fact if you compare Bush's >10% numbers to Kerry's, Kerry was actually much weaker overall. Granted, McCain's Post Convention surge was larger than Bush's, but that was almost entirely because of Palin. Her charm seems to have mostly worn off to all but their base, and with comments like her bizarre assertion that a foreign leader flying over her state somehow gives her foreign relations credibility, I doubt that that will change.

On top of that, I think McCain's stunt over the last two days will have a huge negative effect on him in the polls (and it's important to note that all of the swing state polls reflected in todays numbers were completed before this escapade started). McCain was gambling that the MSM would go along with his stunt and that he would come off as some kind of a hero, but the media treated it like exactly what it was-- a stunt. It seems like even most Republicans see right through him on this one, so I suspect that this was a huge tactical screw up that could end up being the last nail in his campaign's coffin.

Now don't get me wrong. It's WAY to early for anyone to get complacent. McCain might have a strong performance in the debate tonight, and if Palin can manage to do the same, they could come back quickly (and remember, actual performance is irrelavent, only the way the media spins their performance. Considering that the McCain campaign started running ads proclaiming that McCain won the debate before the debate even happened, we know that spin is far more important than reality). I'm optimistic that Sarah Palin is really as bad at these things as she seems, but keeping her away from the media could also have been a really brilliant tactic. They've certainly managed to lower her expectations, so now if she manages to even speak English at the debate, the media will probably spin it as a victory.

The Breakdown for Sept. 26

A huge day for Obama, but one that would have been totally missed if you only looked at the EV split. The top level numbers are unchanged from yesterday, but Obama's strength has increased in several key swing states, and McCain's strength has weakened in to key states where he has been expected to win. Specifically, PA, MI and WI have all moved from the Barely Obama column to the Weak Obama column, with a 5, 6, and 6 percent margin respectively, and Oregon moved from the Weak Obama column to the Strong Obama column. On the McCain side, NC and IN have moved to the Barely column, at a 2 and 3% margin, while WV has moved the opposite direction and is currently +6% McCain.

As of today, McCain's Post-Convention bounce appears to be over, and Obama has returned to virtually the same numbers that he had immediately before the conventions. If the election were held today, all Obama has to do is take any combination of 11 EVs from his or McCain's barely columns to win the election. It remains to be seen whether these numbers stabilize or not, but things are looking very good today.

UPDATE: If you're concerned with the reliability of any of these numbers, it's good to know that with the exception of MO, all of the key states that moved today have three or more polls from multiple companies that make up their number. That tends to suggest that the data is pretty reliable.

If the election were held today and...	Obama	McCain
...all McCain <5% went to Obama	375	163
...all Obama <5% went to McCain	259	279
Shift since yesterday:	+21	-48
Shift this week:	+21	-68

(See this post for an explanation of these numbers.)

What the hell is a credit default swap, anyway? A primer on this ridiculous mess.

This Daily Kos diary is one of the best summaries I've seen of how we got into the financial mess that we are in. Many of you may dismiss the diary simply because of it's source, but it's largely non-partisan. You may not agree with all of his conclusions, but you'll probably have a better understanding of the origins of the crisis.

The Breakdown for Sept. 25

A couple of changes today. Two polls in NH today, one shows McCain with a two point lead, another shows Obama with a six point lead. Taken together, they swap the state back to Obama, but it's still very close. ME and CO also strengthened in their strength of support for obama, both moving from the Barely column into the Weak column. At the same time, McCain's support in Montana is firming up, so it looks doubtful that Obama will do as well there as many had hoped.

If the election were held today and...	Obama	McCain
...all McCain <5%>	354	184
...all Obama <5%>	211	327
Shift since yesterday:	+0	-13
Shift this week:	0	-23

(See this post for an explanation of these numbers.)

The Breakdown for Sept 24.

No changes to the Breakdown numbers again today. The only significant change to the raw data is that Ohio has switched from Tied to Barely McCain.

	Obama	McCain
...all McCain <5% went to Obama:	354	184
...all Obama <5% went to McCain:	198	340
Shift since yesterday:	+0	+0
Shift this week:	+32	+2

(See this post for an explanation of these numbers.)

I don't quite get it... You have a candidate who has lobbied hard for economic reform for more than a year at least, and who has a detailed plan to try to get us out of the current situation vs. a candidate whose only response is "we need a commission" and who still thinks that the deregulation that created this situation was a good idea, and who has multiple campaign staff members who have been receiving payments for lobbying for Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac as recently as this month. How can that second candidate be doing better in one of the most economically hard hit states in the country? Oh, right. His VP nom is pro-life and likes to shoot moose from airplanes. Makes perfect sense...

The Breakdown for Sept. 23

Today is a perfect example of the benefit of the chart and the flaw in "The Breakdown" that I use. If you just look at the numbers in the table, there were no changes since yesterday. But a glance at the chart shows that Obama is in a much stronger position today. Remember, The Breakdown shows the best case for each candidate, but not necessarily the most likely. If the election were held today, McCain could conceivably swing some or all of Obama's weak states away, but the opposite is much more likely. If anybody has suggestions for the numbers in the breakdown, I'd love to hear them.

	Obama	McCain
...all McCain <5% went to Obama:	354	184
...all Obama <5% went to McCain:	198	340
Shift since yesterday:	+0	+0
Shift this week:	+32	+2

(See this post for an explanation of these numbers.)

The economic meltdown is all the Liberals fault!

...at least according to Pat Buchanan.



The key exchange is at 5:16 into the video:

Rachel: But Pat, you can talk about Raines being a bad guy, you can find Democrats who have been deregulators too, but this isn't a Democrat/Republican problem, this is a conservative problem. It is a tenet of American conservatism that regulation is bad and that the markets ought to be left alone. The reason that Fannie and Freddie had John McCain's campaign manager on the payroll for $30,000 a month is because they wanted no regulation, they wanted what conservatives want. I want to know how conservatives can show their face in responding to this crisis without acknowledging that their basic philosophy is at the root of it.

Pat: Well, my basic philosophy is that you don't give mortgages to people who have no credit worthiness, who have incomes that show that they cannot handle the mortgages, who don't put any money down. This was Liberalism run wild in a lot of ways. I mean pushing all that money into sub-prime mortgages-- that's not conservative banking in my opinion!

Ok, I'll concede that Pat is right in his criticisms regarding who was given the mortgages, but how do you get from "some of these people shouldn't have been given mortgages" to "it's all the liberals fault!". If the mortgage regulation laws that were in place previously were still in place today, this problem would not have happened. In fact, if the laws that are still on the books today had simply been enforced, there is a good chance that we could have avoided the problem. The only reason that those people were ever given mortgages was because people thought that they could make money off those mortgages. Had the industry been properly regulated, those mortgages would never have been issued. It's really that simple. Trying to somehow spin this as the fault of Liberals is beyond absurd.

Of course that does tend to apply to most of the things that come out of Pat's mouth.

The Breakdown for Sept. 22

No changes since yesterday...

	Obama	McCain
...all McCain <5% went to Obama:	354	184
...all Obama <5% went to McCain:	198	340
Shift since yesterday:	+0	+0
Shift this week:	+32	+2

(See this post for an explanation of these numbers.)

Cell Phones and Polling

fivethirtyeight.com is one of the best poll geek sites on the net. Nate can parse the numbers in ways that put Chuck Todd to shame. Today, he attempts to answer one of the biggest questions facing pollsters and poll junkies in the entire election cycle: What effect are cell-phones having on the poll results?

Most pollsters don't call people on their cell-phones, but increasingly many people-- especially younger people-- don't have a landline. Does that mean that younger voters are being undersampled? Of course the pollster can always account for age by just polling more young people, but that might not be a good solution. For example, I suspect that young urban residents are less likely to have landlines than their suburban or rural counterparts, and at the same time, these are probably the most likely people to vote for Obama. The same is probably true of college students.

So today, Nate looked at the numbers, comparing the pollsters that call cell-phones vs. those that don't to see if there was a pattern. If the pollsters that called cellphones showed a consistent lean towards Obama, that would suggest that Obama supporters overall are being under reported by the polls. Nate's conclusion? Polls that don't include cellphones are shorting Obama by an average of 2.8%.

UPDATE: Be sure to read Nate's take on the Yahoo!, Knowledge Networks and Stanford University study on the effect that race will have on the election. The short summary? The study is flawed in ways that make its findings close to useless. Race may be a factor, but the study doesn't really help us know how big of a factor it will be in the end (or for that matter, whether it will be a factor against Obama or in his favor).

The Breakdown for Sept. 21

Thanks to Peter Berglund for his assistance with figuring out how to get a line at the 269 EV milestone. Making his changes also allowed me to go back to an EV numbering scale instead of a percentage.

Here are today's numbers:

	Obama	McCain
...all McCain <5% went to Obama:	354	184
...all Obama <5% went to McCain:	198	340
Shift since yesterday:	+0	+17
Shift this week:	+32	+2

(See this post for an explanation of these numbers.)

New chart information...

One of the most common feature requests that I've received is to note key dates on the chart. Because of the density of information, I've been hesitant to do so, but today I realized how I can do it without adding too much clutter to the chart. The darker lines above represent key dates in the election. What actually happened on those dates is noted in the "Key Campaign Dates" box on the right. If anyone has other important dates that should be noted, please suggest them in the comments or email me at polljunkie {at} evstrength.com.

I'm still trying to figure out the best way to make the 50% line stand out more. If there are any Excel (or better yet, Open Office) experts out there who can give me some advice, email me at that same address. [Update: Fixed!]

The Breakdown for Sept. 20

Just the numbers for now... More later.

	Obama	McCain
...all McCain <5% went to Obama:	354	184
...all Obama <5% went to McCain:	215	323
Shift since yesterday:	+0	-24
Shift this week:	+29	-5

(See this post for an explanation of these numbers.)

The Breakdown for Sept 19

Just a quickie today... 30 new polls, but not a whole lot of change.

	Obama	McCain
...all McCain <5% went to Obama:	354	184
...all Obama <5% went to McCain:	191	347
Shift since yesterday:	+0	-3
Shift this week:	+29	+19

(See this post for an explanation of these numbers.)

Note, one correction to yesterday's numbers... I tansposed Obama's shift numbers yesterday. He actually increased 32 points from the day before and 2 points from the week before. I had originally said the opposite. The numbers have been fixed in yesterday's post.

Bob Barr sues to have Obama & McCain removed from TX ballot

An article in the Dallas Morning News describes a lawsuit by Libertarian candidate Bob Barr to have both Barack Obama and John McCain removed from the Texas ballot. Seem that TX had a filing deadline of Aug 26, but neither candidate was actually the nominee at that time. Obama wasn't officially nominated until the 27th, and McCain was nominated on Sept. 3. Sarah Palin, whose name also appears on the ballot, wasn't even named as the VP pick until the 29th.

Normally, I hate these kinds of shenanigans, but in this case, I kind of like it. Here's the reasoning given by state Libertarian party chairman Patrick Dixon:

“The Libertarian Party like other parties and independent candidates always face a struggle to get on the ballot and are sometimes excluded from the ballot for the most minor of details. We may not like the rules, but we have to play by them.”

The two major parties, with the help of the mainstream media, do everything they can to exclude third party candidates from the process. For example, in order to get into the debates, you have to be polling at something like 15% nationally. But with the media completely ignoring the third party candidates, is it any wonder that they can't pull those kinds of numbers? Under these circumstances, a few shenanigans on the part of the third parties are fine with me.

Of course, the two parties don't quite see it that way...

“Quite frankly, I find it very ironic that those in the Libertarian Party, who have in the past been champions of ballot access, are now making attempts to limit that access here in Texas,” said Democratic Party chairman Boyd Richie.

Really? That is ironic, isn't it! Of course, the fact that the irony was intentional seems to be completely lost on Mr. Richie.

(Though I'll concede that my opinion would likley be very different if TX was a state that Obama was likely to win. That said, I have trouble feeling sorry for the Republicans if they do lose TX under these circumstances, after the crap that they pulled in FL in 2000 and OH in 2004 (and other places both years).)

UPDATE (9/24/2008): The Texas Supreme Court has ruled that John McCain and Barack Obama will be allowed to remain on the ballot. No explanation for their ruling was given.

Obama regains lead in Electoral College according to fivethirtyeight.com

On the strength of an abundance of state and national polling, Barack Obama has retaken the lead in our Electoral College projection. Our model now forecasts him to win the election 61.2 percent of the time; it also gives him a slight, half-point advantage in the popular vote. Yesterday, Obama was projected to win the Electoral College just 45 percent of the time, so this is a rather dramatic move upward.

Unfortunately, Nate doesn't provide a way to go back and look at the old charts (at least as far as I can find), but if you saw yesterday's chart, you can instantly tell what a huge shift this is. Also keep in mind that most of these new polls don't yet take fully into account the latest developments in the economy. We should see the full effect of these latest developments in the next few days.

Full details at fivethirtyeight.com

UPDATE: Just to clarify, this site uses the numbers from Electoral-Vote.com, which only uses state poll data. Fivethirtyeight.com uses a more complicated formula that also factors in national polls. I've called national polls irrelevant before, and I generally think that that is correct, but when properly analyzed, they do provide some extra data that the state polls don't necessarily provide.

The breakdown for Sept. 18

Starting today, the breakdown will move from the right column to a regular daily post. This will make it easier to look back at the numbers from previous days.

Today's the sort of day that I made this site for. If you only look at the top level numbers, today was a bad day for Obama. He dropped from being down ten point (247-257) yesterday, to trailing by 31 points today (243-274). When you look a bit deeper, though, things don't looks so bad. In fact the best case scenario for Obama has improved considerably today compared to what it was yesterday.

If the election were held today and...

	Obama	McCain
...all McCain <5% went to Obama:	354	184
...all Obama <5% went to McCain:	188	350
Shift since yesterday:	+32	+12
Shift this week:	+2	+22

For reference, here are yesterday's numbers:

	Obama	McCain
...all McCain <5% went to Obama:	322	216
...all Obama <5% went to McCain:	200	338
Shift since yesterday:	0	2
Shift this week:	-33	+28

(Counting All leaners/ties/opponents <5%)

The real number is somewhere in between.

(See this post for a detailed explanation of these numbers.)

One important thing to keep in mind: All these polls polls were taken before the worst of the most recent financial meltdown, and before McCain's most recent recitation of his mantra, "The fundamentals of the economy are strong". While most Americans grasp of economics may not be as strong as we would like, it doesn't take a graduate degree in economics to know that McCain is blowing smoke. Even his absurd attempts to redefine "fundamentals" to mean "workers" are falling flat. McCain has 26 years of efforts to deregulate as much as possible, so his attempts spin himself as suddenly pro-regulation are likely to fail just as badly. I suspect that this means that McCain's post-convention surge is going to be fading fast.

Of course, remember... I was the guy who said that there was no way that Americans would be stupid enough to vote for George W. Bush (Twice even!), so take all my punditification with a gigantic grain of salt.

Explaining "The Breakdown"

I got an email asking me to explain the numbers in "The Breakdown" a bit more clearly. The numbers there are intended to show the approximate range of likely outcomes if the election were held today. The top line shows the best case for Obama, the second line shows the same for McCain. To arrive at these numbers, I simply take all states that are tied or are polling at less than 5% in the favor of a candidate and switch their side.

For example, today there are two states that are tied, PA and VA for a total of 34 EVs. There are four states that are supporting McCain by less than 5%, Ohio, Indiana, New Mexico and Nevada, for a total of 41 EVs. So Obama's best case number for today is all the states that are currently polling in his favor (247 EVs) plus 34 ties plus 41 McCain leaners for a grand total of 322 EVs. The worst case numbers are simply the number of EVs that a candidate has that are polling at a 5% or higher margin. If I did my math right (never guaranteed!) those two numbers should always add up to 538.

The final two lines in the table list the changes since yesterday and since seven days ago and are based on their best case number. Since these numbers are affected by the strength of support, not just leaners, these two numbers won't always match up. For example, over the last week Obama has lost more strength than McCain has gained. That is because at some point in the last week one or more states have increased their support of McCain to the point where they crossed that 5% threshold. McCain's numbers don't change under that circumstance, but Obama's do.

Updates for 9/16

Just a brief note for those who may have subscribed to the site's feed, but don't check in everyday... The chart and the numbers in "The Breakdown" are updated most days, even if there are no new posts. With RSS you're only going to see new posts, so be sure to check back daily if you want to follow the current state of things.

Today's numbers aren't great for either candidate, though they are a bit worse for Obama. One state moved from supporting each candidate into the tied colum, though Obama lost the bigger prize of PA to McCain's VA. Obama also had a few states shift to lower levels of support which hurts him in the chart, while McCain saw a slight increase in the depth of his support.

The "good" news is that McCain is going to have to explain how his policies will be different from those of Bush and the Republican legislature with regard to disaster management-- both of the natural and financial kind. I doubt that he'll be able to get away with using Palin as a distraction in the face of these very real events.

Before someone accuses me of using people's suffering for political purposes, please understand that my heart go out to all the people who lost a big chunk of their retirement income today, as well as those who have lost their homes or worse in Texas. Also understand that my income is directly tied to the health of the construction industry. I have already taken a substantial pay cut in order to avoid being laid off completely, but whether that can be avoided going forward is anyone's guess. My suffering may not be on par with that of the people of Texas or those who lost there retirement savings, but it is still very real to me.

Almost missed this important bit on E-V.com

I know that most of you probably read Electoral-Vote.com daily just like I do, so I won't make a habit of reposting the points that he makes there. But I was in such a hurry this morning that I just updated the numbers and didn't even take the time to read the site. Because of that, I almost missed this key bit of info:

As everyone probably knows by now, McCain got a solid bounce from his convention. Sarah Palin's speech and to some extent his own speech were very well received by Republicans and some independents. What hasn't been reported until now is the geographic distribution of the bounce.

The Democratic convention was Aug. 25-28 and the Republican convention was Sept. 1-4, so the second column is the pre-convention baseline and the fourth one was taken during and after the Republican convention. If we compare the third and fourth columns to see the effect of the Republican convention, the biggest effect was in the South, where McCain is likely to win most states anyway, and a bit in the East, where Obama is likely to win everything. The effect in the crucial Midwest and West was smaller.

See Electoral-Vote.com for the numbers... They're worth looking at.

New chart design

By popular demand, I've changed the design of the chart to the one shown above. The main downside to this chart style is that I've had to switch the scale from Electoral votes to percentage of the total. Unfortunately, 538 is almost a prime number, so they only scale lines that I could get OpenOffice to display were either every single vote, or only at 269. I wanted to have some additional scale lines for reference, so I switched to percentages. Each scale line represents about 54 EVs (53.8).

The other obvious change is that I switched from an area chart to a column chart. Personally, I like the look of the area chart better, but I don't like the way it displays the transition from the dasys with data to the days without (see Sept. 10 in the chart in the post "An Alternate View"). Switching to the column chart fixes that little artifact.

I looked seriously at doing the chart in a vertical layout. I like the idea a lot, but in the end I decided against it for a couple of reasons, mainly that people with smaller displays will have a hard time being able to see the entire image at one time. Since that's one of the reasons that I made the chart to begin with, it seemed like a bad idea to give it up without a better reason.

As always, you feedback is welcome in the comments!

McCain's Post Convention Surge Revisited

Well, clearly my previous smart-ass comments about McCain's surge were premature. McCain pulled into the lead in the raw numbers today for the first time since May 23. He's also gained enormously in the terms of the apparent strength of his support. Today, for the first time ever, it truly is a dead heat:

	Obama	McCain
All Leads + All Opponent < 5% lead	325	328
> .1% lead	268	270
> 5% lead	210	213
> 10% lead	140	126

Very interesting. We'll see what Obama's rumored new more aggressive campaigning style will do to the numbers.

Fuzzy Election Math

Jacob Rosen has an interesting take on the candidates chances over at his blog The Sports Report. According to his math, if self identified Republicans vote for McCain in the numbers that they are currently polling at (79.5%), then Obama will only need to win self-identified Democrats by a margin of about 70.96%.

Now this level of statistics is way over my head (I just make the pretty pictures), and he seems to make a few assumptions (such as turnout) that may not end up being accurate. But even if his conclusion is off by 1 or 2%, the current political climate suggests that the final results will be close to what Rosen suggests.

Of course, his numbers do have one flaw... They only look at that interesting but fundamentally irrelevant number "Popular Vote". It would be very interesting to have a similar breakdown of each state. Unfortunately, with less than two months to go before the election, I doubt that he would have time for such a massive undertaking. But even with that flaw, his numbers are worth a look.

An alternate view...

In the comments of my first post, Ashley-y suggested a slightly different presentation of the chart:

I would have rearranged it so that the sections go, from top to bottom, Strong McCain, Weak McCain, Barely McCain, Tied, Barely Obama, Weak Obama, Strong Obama; dividing up the full range of 538 EVs, with a lines through the middle at 269, 268, 270.

Well, here's my first go at that chart...

(click to view full size)

What do you think? Better? Worse? Different and useful, but neither better or worse? Your feedback is appreciated.

PS. In the spirit of bi-partisanship, I put Republicans on top this time.

McCain's Post-Convention "Surge"

Here's one interesting bit data that a chart like this make much easier to see... Not all the post-convention polls are in yet, but for all the talk of McCain's post-convention "surge" (the way the media describes it, it's much more than a bounce) McCain's only gained 7 EVs in the last week (as of Sept. 10, actual leaners only). Even more telling, he's actually 31 EVs below where he was on Aug. 21, just a few days before the Democratic convention started. Since that same date, Obama has actually gained 17 EVs.

Some surge, huh? [Update] Removed my snarky comment... See the comments for details[/update]

What's this all about?

Just about everyday in the media, I hear about some new poll that shows Obama with a 12 point lead, or that McCain has closed to within two points. The thing is, national polls don't make a bit of difference. As we all learned back in 2000, the election isn't decided by a national vote, but by the results of each statewide election and the Electoral College. Each state's Electoral votes are winner-take-all, so whether the margin of victory in a state is one vote or one-million, all of the states Electoral votes go to the winning candidate (With the exception of Maine and Nebraska whose Electoral votes are split based on the popular vote within each of their congressional districts). Electoral-Vote.com does a great job of tracking the daily statewide polls, and you can easily tell at a glance where the candidates Electoral vote count stands on any given day.

The problem with those numbers, though, is that sometimes they can be deceiving. Take August 21st, when the top-level number showed Obama 264, McCain 261. Looking at that Electoral vote count, you'd think that the race was pretty much a dead heat. And if it was the end of October, and the election was just a few days away, I'd agree with you. But this far before the election, the top-level number isn't really all that important. What really matters at this point is the strength of a candidates support. On Aug 21, McCain's "Barely" numbers (<5% lead) increased, but his stronger numbers had actually dropped off 14 points from where they were just nine days before. On that same day, Obama had 250 Electoral votes just from states where he had a lead of 5% or more. Clearly, McCain's position wasn't as strong as it first appeared to be. This chart is designed to help visualize that last crucial bit of information that makes all the difference.

This chart is updated manually. I'll try to update it each day, but life may get in the way. Expect updates each day around 11am Pacific if they're going to happen. The chart may be updated even if the rest of the site isn't, so don't take no new post to mean no new chart. Please feel free to post any questions or feedback in the comments!