Electoral College: Swapping Florida for Colorado. plus Missouri Flips

Four States change status today. 3 move in Obama’s direction, 1 moves in McCain’s direction.

Florida (27 ev): As I cautioned in previous updates, Florida was JUST in the “Weak Obama” category and a single poll could easily move it back to “Lean Obama”. This has in fact happened. Florida has flipped back and forth between “Lean Obama” and “Weak Obama” several times in the last couple of weeks. This basically means that the state is hovering around an Obama lead of 5%, which is the boundary between those two categories. There has not yet been a sustained move that keeps the state in one or the other category for a longer period of time. We’ll see if this time is different.

Missouri (11 ev): With the latest polls the five poll average moves from “Lean McCain” to “Lean Obama”. The usual caution applies. We are moving from just barely McCain, to just barely Obama. Either way, it is really too close to call. This is a swing state. Not too much should be read into the state being on one side of the line or the other, because the random variations of polls, or an event in the news that changes a few people’s minds, can very easily flip it back to the other side.

Wisconsin (10 ev): Obama’s lead in the five poll average moves to more than 10%, so Wisconsin moves from “Weak Obama” to “Strong Obama”.

Colorado (9 ev): Obama’s lead in the five poll average moves to more than 5%, so it moves from “Lean Obama” to “Weak Obama” and thus Colorado is no longer a swing state by my classifications. Colorado is smaller than Florida obviously, so this does not make up completely for Florida’s return to swing state status today, but it does mitigate it.

New Summary:

McCain Best Case – Obama 286, McCain 252
Obama Best Case – Obama 380, McCain 158

If everybody gets their leans – 364 Obama, 174 McCain

So the net today is that McCain’s best case gets better, as it once again looks like he might have a shot at Florida if he pushes really hard there… although even so, his best case is still to lose by 34 electoral votes… which indeed is a smaller loss than that metric showed yesterday, but it is still a loss.

Meanwhile, Obama increases his potential winning margin in the “everybody gets their leans” metric to 190 electoral votes.

All in all, despite today’s weakening in Florida, overall trends continue to be toward Obama. Could the Florida change be the start of a movement back toward McCain that will make things tighter again? Maybe. But for the moment it looks more like just Florida bouncing around near a 5% Obama lead.

I keep expecting to see some tightening, and some amount of movement back toward McCain as election day gets closer. But as of yet, I don’t see it.