At dinner on Saturday night a Canberra political lobbyist told me that Obama can’t win because he just won’t win enough states to get there, a view I strongly disagreed with, so earlier this week I did up a state-of-play using the excellent pollster.com site. At about the same time, one of my other favourite sites, RealClearPolitics, put up its own analysis (presumably using the same poll reults).
That is Obama 238 (146 solid, 92 leaning), McCain 163 (93 solid, 70 leaning) and toss-up 137 (the magic number is 270). I had 3 less for Obama. The toss-up states are:
- Nevada (5 electoral college votes) – McCain +3 in latest poll, trend favours McCain
- Colorado (9) – Obama +2, trend favours McCain
- New Mexico (5) – Obama +8 (other recent polls are closer), trend favours Obama slightly
- Missouri (11) – McCain +7 (other recent polls are closer), trend favours Obama
- Minnesota (17) – Obama +1 (other recent polls are stronger for Obama), trend favours Obama
- Indiana (11) – Obama +1, trend is flatlining
- Ohio (20) – McCain +1, trend line favours Obama
- New Hampshire (4) – Obama +8, trend strongly favours Obama
- Virginia (13) – Obama +2, trend favours Obama
- North Carolina (15) – McCain +4, trend favours Obama slightly
- Florida (27) – McCain +8, trend favours Obama
Stand by folks, it’s going to be an interesting time for election geeks, for people like us it’s the biggest and best show on earth.
Update (Sat. 28/6) – here are two good articles on strategy and maths
