Today’s update at electoral-vote.com has a bunch of polls that have now been taken SINCE the first Bush/Kerry debate last week. The lead has shifted. Bush had been in the lead basically since the Republican convention. Not any more.

Current Electoral Vote Predictor 2004

There are 48 new polls today in a total of 25 states. The bottom line is that Kerry is continuing to surge. He now has more than the 270 votes in the electoral college needed to be elected president. However, his margin is razor thin in many states. Still, this is a remarkable comeback. From the electoral college graph you can see how steep his rise has been. All of this gain is undoubtedly due to the first debate. Needless to say, tonight’s debate will be extremely important for both candidates.

Most of the other EV tracking sites update less often, but the debate effect should start showing up on them fully with their next updates soon too. (Most had the totals already starting to shift as the first few polls in critical states started coming in, but now enough time has elapsed that there are lots more state by state post-debate polls available.)

This whole thing is still VERY close. How they do on the next two debates will be critical. Along with news events between now and the election. Every little thing makes a difference with margins this small.

I was going to post my thoughts on the Presidential debate from last week and the VP debate from earlier this week, but at this point I think I’ll wait until I’ve watched tonight’s too.