Electoral College: Fickle Florida

Only one change today. Florida once again flip flops and moves from “Lean Obama” to “Weak Obama” as the five poll average once again peeks above 5%. As I’ve mentioned the last few updates when Florida has switched, it looks like what is really happening is that Florida is hovering right around a 5% Obama lead. 5% just happens to be the boundaries between my categories. So it bounces back and forth. Since Florida has 27 electoral votes, this moves the “Weak Obama” line fairly significantly each time it happens. But the actual state of the race is not substantially different. If Florida switches status, and then stays there more than a few days, then maybe we could really say that it *is* a place where Obama has less than a 5% lead and therefore call it a swing state where McCain has a chance and Obama needs to worry, or that it *is* a place where Obama is ahead by more than 5% and is therefore relatively safe Obama territory. But really, at the moment anyway, it is right on the edge between those categories.

New Summary:

McCain Best Case – Obama 313, McCain 225
Obama Best Case – Obama 380, McCain 158

If everybody gets their leans – 364 Obama, 174 McCain

Looking at the various trends line, and visually averaging out the effects of Florida bouncing back and forth, it appears that the movement toward Obama is *still* going on. We have not yet seen a peak and a start of a reversion back to McCain as we approach the election. I keep thinking that Obama *must* be close to his maximum possible support levels, but so far, we just haven’t seen the movement actually stop.

And we now have McCain’s best case scenario, where he sweeps all the remaining swing states (as per today’s update, NOT including Florida), being that he loses by 88 electoral votes. This is his worst position yet.