The biggest move of the day is MO which moved from Barely Obama to Barely McCain. The other moves in McCain's favor are ND, which moved from tied to Barely McCain and MS which moved from Weak to Strong McCain.
The big move in Obama's direction is AZ, McCain's home state, which went from Weak McCain to Barely McCain. Since the Obama campaign has announced that they intend to start advertising there, AZ is definitely one to watch.
Before anyone gets too concerned about these states moving, it's important to look at the map. Even without these states, Obama has a 353 EV total, well beyond the required 270. And even if you take away the two states where Obama's leads are under 5%, he's still at 311EVs. That's important since it means that he'd need to lose an additional 42 EVs before he would lose. In other words, he would need to lose both PA and OH, plus one additional state (or one EV from ME) before he would lose. Obama currently leads in PA by 10 and in OH by 6, and with three days left, those are nearly insurmountable margins. McCain's odds of taking all four of the states that he must take (PA, OH, FL and NC), plus any additional state, all without losing a single one of the five states he's under 5% in are incredibly slim. I've said all along that the race would tighten as we get closer to the finish line (as has Nate and most other pundits), and that's all that is happening here.
UPDATE: One correction: McCain actually needs to take 43 EVs in the noted scenario to win. 42 EVs would lead to a tie, which would be decided by the incoming democratic congress who would elect Obama.
Obama's EV count in states where he's polling over 50%: 307 EVs.
| If the election were held today and... | Obama | McCain |
| ...all McCain <5% went to Obama | 406 | 132 |
| ...all Obama <5% went to McCain | 311 | 227 |
| Shift since yesterday: | +10 | -0 |
| Shift this week: | +10 | +6 |
(See this post for an explanation of these numbers.)
For the raw poll data and more details, see this day's page on Electoral-Vote.com:
3 comments:
Unfortunatly?
anon- I think he is implying the meaning of "Unfortunately for him (Senator McCain),…".
Interesting statistic from a "Dick Polman" (?) at The Philadelphia Inquirer:
The Democratic-dominance argument ultimately hinges on Obama's scoring a solid, broad-based victory in the nationwide popular vote. Historically, the bar for Democrats is not very high; if he merely surpasses 50.1 percent, he would be the first nonincumbent Democrat to do so since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932.
I'd forgotten about LBJ and FDR being incumbents when they got their biggest mandates. Perhaps we could expect an incumbent Obama to rack up higher popular vote numbers in his second term, numbers as Clinton and FDR did, if voters are satisfied with popular measures taken during his still-hypothetical first term.
Other than that, the article merely argues that the possible Obama landslide is not a lurch to the left but a movement toward pragmatism in politics.That's probably bad news for the nutwing Huckabee/Palin end of the Republican party; they may need to end the culture war and try to out-pragmaticize Obama.
That Democratic non-incumbent popular vote high-water mark set by FDR in 1932 is 57.4%. He was running against the incumbent Hoover and was not African-American, however.
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