Like others I know, I have been vacillating between certainty that McCain can’t win and fear that he will. Mostly I believe the long Republican nightmare is over – Obama is too good a candidate to lose to such a pathetic figure as John Sidney McCain. But to help control my anxiety over the next few days, I have constructed a formula that will tell me when I really have something to worry about, and I thought I would share it with you.
Everyday (yes, more than once) I look at one or two websites that does a ‘poll of polls’. I like TalkingPointsMemo.com best because they weight the polls by sample size. I look at the crucial “battleground” states that pollsters have not already assumed will be won by one candidate or the other. I assume McCain will win every one of those that Obama is trailing or has a lead of five points or less. (For instance, TPM shows Obama ahead in Florida by 47 to 44.7. Since that lead is less than 5, I assume McCain will win it.) I tell myself I will only get anxious when McCain has enough states under this formula to bring Obama below the 270 electoral votes required to win. For now, I am happy to report, this seems a long way off.
There are scenarios where Obama could lose Pennsylvania and still get to 270, but McCain is so far behind there now (57.7 to 41.7), I am assuming Obama wins Pennsylvania. Including Pennsylvania and all the other safe Obama states gets to 259 electoral votes. Thus, to get to 270, Obama only needs 11 electoral votes from among these states: Nevada (5), New Mexico (5), Colorado (9), Missouri (11), Montana (3), North Dakota (3), Indiana (11), North Carolina (15), Virginia (13), Ohio (20), and Florida (27). Obviously there are a lot of ways to get 11 electoral votes from those possibilities. But applying my formula, I give McCain Montana, North Dakota, Missouri, Indiana, Ohio, North Carolina, and Florida, (several of which Obama leads, but by less than 5 percent).
Obama’s leads in the remaining battlegrounds are: Nevada – 8%; New Mexico – 10%; Colorado – 6%; and Virginia – 5.7%.
Any one of Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, Indiana, Missouri, or Florida would secure Obama 270 electoral votes, but he could lose all of those and still get to 270 with Colorado and either New Mexico or Nevada.
But it seems very likely that Obama will win Virginia, and if he wins both Pennsylvania and Virginia, he wins the election. Those are the states I am currently focused on for anxiety reduction. The polls close in Virginia at 7pm eastern time and in Pennsylvania at 8 (7pm in Indiana, 7:30 in Ohio and North Carolina, 8 in Florida and Missouri]). So it could be an early election night, even if we don’t trust exit poll-based projections and wait for actual vote counts!
