Bell Curve The Law Talking Guy Raised by Republicans U.S. West
Well, he's kind of had it in for me ever since I accidentally ran over his dog. Actually, replace "accidentally" with "repeatedly," and replace "dog" with "son."

Friday, October 24, 2008

State of the race -- 11 days to go.

This is a daily feature of this blog. For further detail, please see this post.

StateRCPPollster538538 Win %
NV+3.3+3.2+2.071%
CO+5.4+5.7+6.393%
IN+0.5+0.1+1.668%
MO+2.7+1.6+1.769%
OH+6.6+3.9+3.683%
VA+7.0+7.5+6.895%
NC+1.0+2.6+1.769%
FL+2.2+2.2+2.877%


Dr. S mentions it in the comments, and I referred to this in my original post on this subject, but let's say it again: the "538" column gives the projected result of the election, based on a number of things, not just polls. I feel like including it because it gives a nice picture of where they expect the race to be on election day.

The big thing that first pops out at you when looking at these numbers is Indiana, where Barack Obama has been trailing since the beginning of this campaign, but now has (tiny) leads by all three measures. To get a sense of how amazing this is, check out the pollster.com graph for Indiana:

Remember, Indiana's polls close early on election night (most of them at 6 PM Eastern time). If that race is too close to call (or goes Obama) we will get an early sense of how the night is going to go.

In other news, how far ahead does Obama have to be in a state before we get to stop calling it a swing state? According to 538's simulations, Obama is now a 95% favorite to win Virginia, and a 93% favorite to win Colorado. Contrast that to two states I feel are safe for Obama -- New Hampshire (95%) and New Mexico (94%). As of today, it is very hard to see John McCain winning this election.

4 comments:

Raised By Republicans said...

Actually, the states that will tell us how things will go on Election Night will be Virginia and North Carolina. They close their polls sooner than Indiana (I think) and they are both equally improbable pick ups for any Democrat.

Raised By Republicans said...

OK, just saw that Indiana closes super early (gotta love states with Republicans running their elections). So Indiana will be the bell weather.

Dr. Strangelove said...

Bell Curve: My apologies... I should have seen your "projection" note in the original post. I appreciate the daily summaries.

RbR: Believe it or not, the word is "bellwether" and it actually has nothing to do with the climate. A "wether" is a castrated sheep. Shepherds used to put a bell on the (safely neutered) lead sheep so they could hear way the flock was headed.

Raised By Republicans said...

Hmmm...learn somethin new every day.