Electoral College: The Biden Effect!

Only one change for today, and for once, it is good news for Obama. But I’m not sure we can declare the McCain bump to be over quite yet.

For only the second time this year, and the first time since the VP selection, there was a poll of Delaware. As a result of this poll, the average for Delaware (normally I use a five poll average, but since there have only been two, I can only use two…) moves to Obama being ahead by more than 10%. Woo! Now those three electoral votes are in the bag for Obama! :-)

OK, I kid. Even before this, the one poll in Delaware had Obama up 9%. So nobody was ever worried about Delaware, or particularly interested as it was considered a lock for Obama. I had it categorized as “Weak Obama” since it was under 10%, but it was barely under. In any case, Delaware is now officially “Solid Obama”. It does not change the summary:

New Summary:

McCain Best Case – McCain 319, Obama 219
Obama Best Case – Obama 328, McCain 210

If everybody gets their leans (and Obama gets DC) – 269/269 ELECTORAL COLLEGE TIE

If you look at the chart, you can see over the last week or so some small movement in the Obama strong and weak lines over the past few days. This is New Mexico coming back out of swing state territory where it was a few days ago, and today’s strengthening in Delaware. It would be tempting to look at this and think that maybe this was the start for a reversal of the McCain gains of the last couple of weeks.

That would however be premature. The Delaware change, even though the poll just hit my charts today, probably represents a change that happened several weeks ago after the VP selection, or maybe even no significant change at all given the state was right on the line anyway and there are only two polls. In New Mexico the state “dipped below the line” to be a swing state, but only for a couple of days. It is right on the edge of “Lean Obama” and “Weak Obama” and that could be random fluctuations too.

Bounces typically last a couple of weeks. It takes a little bit longer for state polls to catch up. Watch carefully what happens over the next week or so. If there is a real retreat from the McCain bounce, we should start to be able to see bigger changes. But it is not there yet. For the moment, the pattern is still major McCain gains since the conventions.