The Breakdown for Nov. 3

Just none more day to go. And absolutely nothing happened. Very anti-climactic. Things actually did tighten just a little bit, but nothing significant. If you average all fifty states worth of polls, the race moved from 48.96% Obama to 44.86% McCain yesterday to 48.94% to 45.14%, a net gain of .3%. If this was Oct. 3 that would be reason for optimism, but on Nov. 3 it's not terribly helpful. The other thing to note is where the race is tightening...

Note that he still has at least a 5% lead in every state that tightened today, other than Kentucky which he had no chance of winning, anyway. The only thing that concerns me at all there is Ohio, which dropped below the 50% threshold.

On the other hand, the big prize actually moved in Obama's favor:

If Obama can take FL, it's pretty much over. His lead there is small, but the trend is in the right direction.

Obama's EV count in states where he's polling over 50%: 287 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:	+0	-0
Shift this week:	+0	-5

(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:

PDF Version of the Election Score Card

For those of you who won't be around your PC during the election (like myself), I made a PDF version of my Election Score Card that you can print out and keep the tally manually. If you'll be near your PC, the spreadsheet version is much more useful, but this is a good backup.

McCain's Must Win States

Nate did some number crunching that I've been hoping for for a long time today, and he tells us What A McCain Win Looks Like.... He shows the four most likely scenarios where McCain wins, and he gives us this useful bit of info:

"Also, there are some states that truly do appear to be "must-wins" for McCain. In each and every one of the 624 victory scenarios that the simulation found for him this afternoon, won Florida, Georgia, Missouri, Indiana and Montana. He also picked up Ohio in 621 out of the 624 simulations, and North Carolina in 622 out of 624. If McCain drops any of those states, it's pretty much over."

I think that MT is less of a must-win, since it only has 3 EVs, but I agree with the others.

Here are the other states to watch in order of poll closing time (all times EST):

• IN: Most polls close at 6PM. Unless it's a blowout, we won't know the result until later.
• VA: Polls close at 7PM. Could be called soon after the polls close.
• FL: Most polls close at 7PM, but likely won't be called until later.
• GA: Polls close at 7PM, but likely won't be called until later.
• NC: Most polls close at 7:30PM, but likely won't be called until later
• OH: Polls close at 7:30PM, but likely won't be called until later
• PA: Polls close at 8PM. Most likely will be called fairly quickly.
• MO: Polls close at 8PM, but likely won't be called until later.

PA and VA are probably the two that will be called first. If those two go to Obama, McCain has virtually no realistic path to the White House. Obama has solid leads in both of these states, and he's polling above 50% in both of them. If there is a blowout in any of the others we may know sooner, otherwise we'll know when those two are called.

UPDATE: Added Ohio, which I had forgotten. My estimates of when the reports will come in is solely based on polling margins. The bigger the margin, the sooner we should have a solid idea of who the victor is. Poll closing times courtesy of the Green Papers.

Election Cheat Sheet: Final version?

Ok, here's the newest version that has a bunch of improvements, and it's much easier to use.

Just type the winner's name in the 'Winner' column, and everything else happens automatically. You can use either 'Obama' or 'obama', 'McCain' or 'mccain', but anything else will not work with the calculations. After you've entered each name once or twice, the Autocomplete should take over so you will only need to enter 'o' or 'm'.

NE and ME will now work like all the others, however you can still split their votes if needed. Just enter the votes as needed. Note, this will overwrite the formula that's there now, so once you enter data in those fields, you can't go back to the autocalculations. No big deal, just something to remember.

This might be the last version, unless there is more feedback. I'll try to update the polling data at least once more, but I wouldn't expect any additional major changes.

[Excel File]

UPDATE: It looks like some of the formatting is lost if you save this a an Excel file, then open it again in OpenOffice (which I use). If you're using OpenOffice, you'll probably have better luck with this [ODS file]. The differences are minor, and don't affect the functionality, just the formatting of the charts. Excel user might want to try both versions to see which works best for them.

UPDATE 2: I've made several tweaks to the spreadsheet, so if you downloaded it earlier (say before 9:30 PST Sunday), you'll probably want to download a new copy, or just wait and get the truly final version with updated polling info probably tomorrow evening. There's also a PDF version available here if you won't be near your computer during the election.

The Breakdown for Nov. 2

John McCain had another relatively good day in the polls today. Three states moved, two towards McCain and one towards Obama. PA and NM both tightened a bit, moving into the Weak Obama category with leads of 9 points and 8 points respectively. On the other side, AR moved to Weak McCain with a 9 point margin.

With just two days left, an eight-point or greater lead is pretty much insurmountable. Even if you give McCain a 5% bonus for the Bradley effect, McCain would lose 311 to 227. In reality, between pollsters not calling cell-phones, and the simple reality of the economy, I expect a reverse bradley effect in many states, so I doubt that it will be that close. And as noted yesterday, 311 is a big number since it means that McCain would need to take both PA and OH, plus at least one additional state (or some other combination of 43 EVs-- 42 to tie) to win.

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:	+0	-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:

Election Cheat Sheet, beta 2

Ok, here's an updated version with some of the changes you've suggested.

On this version, The EVs are calculated automatically, so just put any positive number (I'd put a '1', but put whatever you want since it has no effect on anything) in the appropriate 'tally' field and the EVs are calculated automatically. The only exceptions are NE & ME which allocate their EVs by congressional district, so you'll need to manually enter the appropriate values.

Some caveats: 1) There is no error checking, so if you give a state to both candidates, it will not complain. 2) I can't seem to figure out how to lock the cell functions, so watch for stray key presses. The purple cells are auto-calculated, so just avoid them.

What do you think?

[Excel File]

The Breakdown for Nov. 1

With just three days left before the Election, John McCain had his best day in weeks. Unfortunately, by all indications, it's probably too little and too late.

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: