By Leonard Doyle in Washington
The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder has a weekly indispensable guide to the race for the White House. Here are some details:
- Likely Obama: CA, CT, DE, DC, HI, IL, ME, MD, MA, NJ, NY, OR, RI, VT, WA (190 electoral votes)
- Lean Obama: IA, MN, NM, NH (26 electoral votes)
- Marginal toss-ups: FL, MI, WI, PA, OH (95 electoral votes)
- True toss-ups: NV, CO, VA (27 electoral votes)
- Lean McCain: GA, IN, MO, MT, NC, SD (58 electoral votes)
- Likely McCain: AK, AL, AZ, AR, ID, KS, KY, LA, MS, NE, OK, SC, TN, TX, UT, WV, WY, ND (142 electoral votes)
- Obama: likely + leaners: 216 electoral votes
- McCain: likely + leaners = 200 electoral votes
- Tossups: 122 electoral votes.
New Mexico moves to lean-Obama based on the Obama campaign's confidence there and the relative lack of attention McCain is paying to the state.
Colorado, Nevada and Virginia are more competitive than they ought to be at this point.
New Hampshire moves to lean-Obama for meta-environmental reasons and because of the strength of his recent polling.
Florida remains a toss-up; the Obama campaign has a larger organization there, and McCain is underperforming along the I-4 corridor.
No reason just yet to move Montana into the tossup category.
The North Carolina Senate race is getting very competitive.
The distribution and categories are based on polling, historical trends, conversations with the campaigns, and the thoughts of smart analysts in those states.
MARGINAL TOSS UPS - states where historical voting patterns seem tobe asserting themselves but exogenous factors prevent the electorate from leaning to a particular candidate at this point.
TRUE TOSS UPS - states where historical voting patterns are not asserting themselves AND exogenous factors prevent the electorate from leaning.
You don't win in the US by winning the national polls.. you win by winning the states. (Gore got more votes than GWB, Nixon got more than Kennedy even! If Kerry would have gotten a few more votes in Ohio he would have beaten W with much less votes)
This is what has always been Obama's strategy all along.. it even worked for him in the primaries.. and there the votes are stil actually split between the participants (still some states carries disproportional weight)
Add to that that Obama has had a very good organization in many of those states that are now moving to "toss up" or even "lean" since early on in the primaries, and then you can see that "the polls" mean little, other than perhaps giving mcCain the "aura" that he's certainly not out of the game yet..
For that matter, you can argue that a national vote count is no good reflection right now.. why would you even bother going to the polls if your state has been 70% Republican for the past 10 elections?
Posted by: Tijl | 18 September 2008 at 01:23 PM
Same planet as you, just he's living in the now rather than dwelling on the past that you are.
Obama is ahead by 2 in the latest Gallup polls - the McPalin bounce seems to be over.
Posted by: Snoop | 17 September 2008 at 10:44 PM
That's wierd-
McCain is ahead in US polls; what planet are you on?
Posted by: karenabcde | 17 September 2008 at 06:14 PM