Electoral Map -- 12 days to go
Here's my latest electoral map (cartogram). With only twelve days until the election, patterns now established are going to be harder to break.
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West Virginia, New Hampshire and Nevada moved noticeably in McCain's direction, but Indiana, South Dakota, North Dakota, Ohio, Montana, Minnesota and Maine moved visibly in Obama's.
McCain is allocating his resources pretty much where I would in his position (basically going for broke in Pennsylvania) but I don't know whether it can help at this point. It looks like Obama has an 11-point lead in Pennsylvania.
If you add up the states where Obama has at least a 10-point lead, you get 255 electoral votes. (A similar count for McCain would yield 134.) I think it's unlikely that any of those 20 states are going to move for McCain. This would mean that Obama needs to win only 15 of the 149 electoral votes in the states that are still competitive.
As I've now said several times, though, anything is possible. Thomas E. Dewey was substantially ahead just before he lost in 1948 (although the polling methods back then were much less accurate), and Al Gore won a lot more votes than any of the polls suggested he would in 2000 (although that was probably last-minute decisions by a lot of Nader voters).
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West Virginia, New Hampshire and Nevada moved noticeably in McCain's direction, but Indiana, South Dakota, North Dakota, Ohio, Montana, Minnesota and Maine moved visibly in Obama's.
McCain is allocating his resources pretty much where I would in his position (basically going for broke in Pennsylvania) but I don't know whether it can help at this point. It looks like Obama has an 11-point lead in Pennsylvania.
If you add up the states where Obama has at least a 10-point lead, you get 255 electoral votes. (A similar count for McCain would yield 134.) I think it's unlikely that any of those 20 states are going to move for McCain. This would mean that Obama needs to win only 15 of the 149 electoral votes in the states that are still competitive.
As I've now said several times, though, anything is possible. Thomas E. Dewey was substantially ahead just before he lost in 1948 (although the polling methods back then were much less accurate), and Al Gore won a lot more votes than any of the polls suggested he would in 2000 (although that was probably last-minute decisions by a lot of Nader voters).