Electoral College: Obama gains more Strong States

Today Obama moves to leads greater than 10% in both Washingotn (11 ev) and Maine (4 ev). Those states thus become “Strong Obama” states. Since they were not swing states anyway, these changes do not affect my overall summary.

Summary:

McCain Best Case – Obama 277, McCain 261
Obama Best Case – Obama 383, McCain 155

If everybody gets their leans – 364 Obama, 174 McCain

So where does that put us?

Well, McCain’s best case if he wins every single swing state is still to lose.

Over the last week or so, McCain has been able to move a couple of states (Florida and Colorado) from being blue states back to being swing states. The lead hasn’t flipped toward McCain in any of the swing states, but he has made them close again, which is of course the needed first step. He still however needs to pull at least 9 more electoral votes from “Weak Obama” to “Lean Obama” in order to have a possible path to victory.

Meanwhile, there is another line I hadn’t paid much attention to lately. That is the “Strong Obama” line. That is, the number of electoral votes Obama has including ONLY the states where his lead is over 10%. Obama does not seem to have peaked yet on this metric. Obama now has 245 electoral votes with just these states. That means he only needs 25 electoral votes from his Weak or Lean states in order to win. There are 119 electoral votes in those categories at the moment that he can pick from to try to get those 25.

The question here is not if McCain can win. The question is if he can even pull enough states back out of Obama’s world to even have an imaginable way to win.