This is a daily feature of this blog. For further detail, please see this post.
| State | RCP | Pollster | 538 | 538 Win % |
| NV | +3.5 | +3.8 | +2.7 | 77% |
| CO | +6.0 | +6.7 | +6.7 | 95% |
| IN | +0.3 | +1.7 | +0.5 | 57% |
| MO | +1.0 | +1.9 | +1.1 | 63% |
| OH | +6.0 | +4.9 | +3.4 | 82% |
| VA | +7.8 | +8.5 | +6.6 | 95% |
| NC | +1.5 | +2.7 | +1.3 | 65% |
| FL | +1.9 | +1.0 | +2.5 | 75% |
Virginia has got to come off this list soon. Obama's numbers there are insane. The most conservative estimate for Obama's numbers there puts him at a 6.6 point lead. By comparison, George Bush won Virginia by 3 points (51-48) in 2004.
Al Giordano played this game with his readers and now I'd like to do it with you: construct a plausible scenario in which John McCain wins this election. Go ahead, it's fun! Play with the L.A. Times electoral vote map and try to build something that looks reasonable. Here's the best I could get:
I think if I had to, I could make a decent argument for this scenario. New Mexico and Colorado are fairly similar states, and if one starts tending in one direction, you'd expect the other might as well. As for New Hampshire, well, we all remember what happened to Obama in the primary season.
Anyway, construct your best map and give it a shot in the comments.
4 comments:
I played around a bit... Yours is the best map I can come up with. I suppose you could give VA to the Republicans instead of NH. That's about it.
I agree with Dr. Strangelove in that it would make more sense to give VA to McCain instead of NH, but this still seems very unlikely. For this to work for McCain, he's going to have to take the two major swing states: FL and OH along with many states that are leaning Obama like VA, NM, and CO.
These maps really do show how far along the race really is. Colorado and New Mexico were, and are, the keys to a tight race.
NM and Colorado are actually dissimilar states. In the past few elections, NM has been close and voted for Gore - Colorado has been a red state (albeit not ruby red) that only spent its EV for Clinton because of the Perot vote. NM is about 1/3 Hispanic and some 20% Indian. Colorado is about 80% white. NM is rural; Colorado is mostly urban today (unlike 20 years ago), with most of the population in and around Denver. New Mexico ia much more like the Hispanic areas of West Texas (El Paso) or the Democratic areas of Arizona (urban Phoenix and Tucson). Colorado, by contrast, resembles Washington state - a very white state very split between rural and urban areas, but with urban gaining in population numbers.
Post a Comment