A new poll drops Obama’s Iowa lead in my 5 poll average to under 10%, which moves Iowa from “Strong Obama” to “Weak Obama”. In my “range of possible outcomes” that I do, this doesn’t make a difference, as I only allow the “Leaning” states (less than 5% lead) to move back and forth, not the “Weak” states (lead between 5% and 10%). But it certainly is a sign that things in Iowa aren’t going in a direction Obama would like.

Current Summary:

McCain Best Case – McCain 340, Obama 198
Obama Best Case – Obama 362, McCain 176

And if everybody gets their leans (and Obama gets DC) – McCain 283, Obama 255

New Poll in Virginia. It moves my “last 5 poll average” such that Virginia goes from “Leaning McCain” to “Weak McCain”. This means we now only have 13 states and 154 electoral votes in the “up for grabs” leaning categories as Virginia is now more solidly in the McCain camp.

If everybody gets their leaning states, and Obama gets DC, then McCain would win 283 to 255.

But allowing for the full possible swing of the leaning votes… and generously thinking that DC could go either way since we have no polls (even though we all know DC will go Dem) this gives us:

McCain best case: McCain 330, Obama 208
Obama best case: Obama 362, McCain 176

A new poll results in moving Nevada from “Weak Obama” to “Leans Obama” as Obama’s lead there drops to less than 5%.

So at this point, assuming any of the “Leans” states could really go either way we could easily see any result between:

Obama best case: Obama 375 vs McCain 163
McCain best case: McCain 340 vs Obama 198

(Best case meaning that candidate wins ALL of the “leaning” states… and also wins DC where there are no polls yet… so the best cases are clearly unlikely cases, but they provide outer bounds.)

That is a huge range with all these less than 5% lead states in play. There are 15 states and 174 electoral votes in that category at the moment. That is a LOT.

I imagine that as we get closer to November some of those states will move solidly into one camp or the other. But there is certainly the possibility that we will get to November with a huge number of electoral votes in states that are essentially too close to call until the votes are actually counted.

And wouldn’t that be fun.

As I’ve been promising for awhile, I went ahead and adjusted how I am reporting results for the electoral college extrapolations. Previously, any lead by a candidate of less than 10% was simply classified “weak”. But a lot was obscured by that. So I now classify leads of less than 5% as “leaning” states, with 5% to 10% now being termed “weak”.

I have also added a “just the previous month” chart in addition to the chart showing the full year before the election. Changes can often be seen better at this scale.

In the end, what seems to be clear is just how up for grabs this election is. While if you include all the leaning states you end up with a McCain win (by about 293 to 245 at the moment), if you take into account the fact that any lead less than 5% is just barely outside the typical margin of error of polls, and is an amount that can clearly be erased overnight by changing events, what you actually see is that if the election was held today anything could happen between McCain winning by 76 electoral votes and Obama winning by 106 electoral votes. (On the chart this is represented by the area between the two “weak” lines.)

So anything could happen.

Not to mention of course that we are still seven and a half months from the election.

This will be a fun seven and a half months.

Something tells me this race is going to flip back and forth a lot. A few more polls were posted at pollster.com for several states. This once again included adding some polls retroactively in a few places.

In any case, there were two states that changed status. Iowa moved from “Weak Obama” to “Strong Obama”. But the one that mattered was that Pennsylvania moved from “Weak Obama” (where it hadn’t been very long) back to “Weak McCain”. Truth is Pennsylvania at the moment is pretty much tied, so it is easy for it to flip back and forth with a new poll.

Pennsylvania’s 21 electoral votes are enough to change the lead again. We’re now at 273 electoral votes for McCain (just over the 270 needed to win), 262 electoral votes for Obama, and 3 electoral votes where there are still no polls.

In any case, with the polls where they are right now, the electoral college is just about as close to tied as you can get.

This is going to be a fun election.

Of course, all of this is still assuming a McCain vs Obama matchup. If this process wasn’t so cumbersome, I’d keep track of Clinton vs McCain simultaneously. But as is, I’ll keep up what I am doing. If it starts looking like Clinton has a realistic chance of catching Obama (something which is NOT the case right now) then I might start looking at those charts too (or instead).

But for now… it is looking like a very close McCain vs Obama race. I will do the extra lines on the chart I promised soon, but as a quick peek, the states where the candidate that is ahead is ahead by less than a 5% margin are:

• Texas (34 ev)
• Pennsylvania (21 ev)
• Ohio (20 ev)
• Michigan (17 ev)
• New Jersey (15 ev)
• Virginia (13 ev)
• Minnesota (11 ev)
• Missouri (11 ev)
• Wisconsin (10 ev)
• South Carolina (8 ev)
• Nebraska (5 ev)
• New Mexico (5 ev)
• New Hampshire (4 ev)
• North Dakota (3 ev)
• South Dakota (3 ev)

The basic point of the above is WOW. That is a HUGE number of states and a lot of electoral votes where the polls are basically saying the state is completely up for grabs. And yes, it is still quite a long time until November, but still… this race is COMPLETELY wide open.