| If the election were held today and... | Obama | McCain |
| ...all McCain <5% went to Obama | 375 | 163 |
| ...all Obama <5% went to McCain | 260 | 278 |
| Shift since yesterday: | +0 | -0 |
| Shift this week: | +0 | -1 |
Today's Numbers: | Yesterday's Numbers: |
The chart at the left shows the distribution of electoral votes based on statewide polls. The colors represent the gap in the poll. The darker the color, the larger the gap. 50% +1 or 270 Electoral votes are needed to win, out of a possible 538.
This site is really designed to be used along with Electoral-Vote.com. I provide one useful way to interpret the data, but without the information that is provided at that site, you won't get as much use from this chart.
For a complete explanation of the methodology used, see the Electoral-Vote.com polling FAQ. The raw data used to generate the chart is also available there. Please note that other than using the data that they make available, this site is not affiliated with Electoral-vote.com
2 comments:
McCain will start swiftboating Obama soon. See: http://tinyurl.com/4n5ecv
This new batch of negative ads could be a momentum changer. Let's see what happens. I hope the new attack ads merely turn people off, but history tells us many people listen to character attacks.
I don't think negative ads can swing enough votes at this point. Both the Primary and General elections have already been almost entirely negative towards Obama, but the effects of all those negative ads hasn't really made much difference. You see a slight downtick in Obama's numbers after the "Celebrity" ad and the several others that followed it (remember, the McCain was releasing a new negative ad just about every day for a while), but the long term effect was negligible. They don't seem to have any new material this time around-- still Rezko, Ayres, Obama will raise your taxes... The voters have heard these all before. McCain also takes a hit to his "maverick" label every time he runs one of these ads-- all Obama has to do to respond is run an ad with a soundbite of McCain decrying negative advertising. And of course McCain has his own skeletons in the closet-- lobbyists, Keating, cheating, not to mention Palin's dozens of scandals such as Troopergate and "get paid by the state to sleep in her own bed-gate"-- so Obama could well respond with his own series of attack ads if necessary.
Negative ads can be very effective-- they certainly worked for Bush in 1988-- but there comes a point when issues are more important to voters than attacks. The circumstances of this election are very different than 1988 (or really any recent election), and virtually every metric favors Democrats.
Attack ads might well swing things back a bit towards McCain, but I doubt that it will be enough. My personal suspicion is that a big string of negative advertising now might actually hurt McCain since it will just make him look desperate.
Course, I could be wrong...
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