In fact, who's in for a bold and reckless prediction?
I'm going to boldly and recklessly make one, at least a rough ballpark type one... I think Obama's going to get somewhere between 305 and 325 Electoral Votes, and McCain somewhere between 210 and 235 EVs.
That involves McCain winning all the contested Southern states except Virginia: I think he'll end up getting FL, NC, and MO. And possibly IN and NV too. But it wont be enough.
I would even not be particularly surprised if McCain outdoes my prediction and wins Ohio as well. That would switch the result from 306-232 to 286-252 - and still not be enough.
Best-case scenario, on the other hand, way I see it, is Obama winning not just IA, NM, CO and VA, and those seem pretty safe right now, as well as OH, but also IN, NV and possibly even ND -- ie, 325-213.
I dont see Obama getting more than that, really - I think it's going to be enough tighter than the polls now suggest to put FL, MO and NC out of reach, and make current talk about states as far-fetched as MT and GA seem silly in retrospect.
Obama’s polling compared to Kerry’s, Gore’s and Clinton’s - final day update
Observationalism
4 November
My comparison from a week and a half ago of how Obama’s polling numbers match up with Kerry’s polling in 2004, Gore’s in 2000 and Clinton’s in 1996 has surprisingly become the most visited page on this blog since. Considering the interest, I thought it would be good to provide a last-day update on how the comparison is shaping up at the end of the campaign.
There are four daily tracking polls this year that also conducted daily tracking polls in either 2000 or 2004 or both. The comparison between the races shapes up differently depending on which pollster’s numbers you look at. The best known is Gallup, and this graph compares Obama’s performance versus McCain in the Gallup poll with Kerry’s, Gore’s and Clinton’s performance against their Republican opponents:
Looking good indeed; the 11-point lead Gallup showed for Obama in its final presidential estimate last night is on par with its election-day polling lead for Bill Clinton in ‘96. While Clinton’s ample lead gradually eroded over the course of the last two weeks of campaigning, Obama’s held steady. Quite the difference with the nailbiters the last Gallup polls out predicted for the 2000 and 2004 races.
TIPP is a polling firm you may not have heard of; it has conducted a daily tracking poll for the Investors Business Daily this year, and for IBD and the Christian Science Monitor in earlier years. Of the seven tracking polls that were conducted on a daily basis in the last two weeks, this poll has tended to show the smallest Obama leads of all. When McCain’s chief strategist Steve Schmidt asserted, two weeks ago, that “the McCain campaign is roughly in the position where Vice President Gore was running against President Bush,” the TIPP poll was the only poll that confirmed his assertion.
Today, however, brings good news for Obama supporters: after oscillating between a 1-point and 5-point lead for Obama for two weeks, TIPP published a final estimate last night that had Obama leading by 7.2%. And that makes the comparison over the years look like this:
Read on...
