So, with 2 months to go, where are we?
It's been long enough after the conventions that I'm comfortable saying that McCain's bounce has reached it's height, at least, his convention bounce has.
On the state polling level, not much changed since the conventions. The swing states are still swinging back and forth. Michigan has tightened up, but Obama maintains a lead there.
I use
http://www.pollster.com/ as my primary source of info, as they are relatively up-to-date and pretty non-partisan.
Counting the 'strong' states (which aren't going anywhere for either candidate) and the 'lean' states (which MOST LIKELY will not go anywhere for either candidate), the current electoral vote count stands at:
Obama 243
McCain 179
Toss-up 116
It's obvious that Obama is sitting in a good position right now. Here are the toss-up states, with their pollster.com graphs:
New Hampshire:
Michigan:
Virginia:
North Carolina:
Florida:
Ohio:
North Dakota:
Montana:
Colorado:
Finally, Nevada:
Not a bad showing from Obama in any of these swing states.
My recommendation for Obama would be to focus on MI and CO. If he wins those two, he wins the election. He only needs 26 out of the 116 toss-up EVs to win the election, and it seems that he has multiple paths to achieve that.
Some of this polling is out of date. I doubt Montana is within reach for Obama, though the fact that Ron Paul is on the ticket there now will help him considerably. I would bet my life that Obama will win Michigan, he's been ahead there the whole time and they're running plenty of ads there which are some of his best ads to date.
As for Colorado, it's hard to say. I think Obama can do it.
Unless we see a major shift in state polling by the end of next week, this election is Obama's to lose. At this point in 2004:
Obama is doing
far better then Kerry, in terms of electoral votes, at this point in 2004. McCain has a huge hill to climb. In order to hit 270, he must win nearly every one of the 'swing states.' It's hard to overstate how overwhelmingly McCain will have to win.
Let's say that McCain wins all his current projected states, plus -
FL - 27
NC- 15
VA - 13
NH - 4
OH - 20
ND - 3
MT - 3
NV - 5
His electoral vote count would be at - 269, to tie with Obama. At that point the House of Representatives would decide and would declare Obama the winner.
Forget OH and FL; the true battlefield is in CO and MI. McCain cannot afford to lose either of those two states and still expect to win the election.
Cycloptichorn