In the last couple of days, Barrack O'Bama's projected electoral count has fallen below 270 in the sites I check everyday.

Just now FiveThirtyEight.com reports that McCain is winning a small majority of the simulations i.e. Win % for BO is now 47.9 vs McCain's 52.1%.

What does this all mean ?

The sky is falling.

More below the fold.

When they speak of the term Appalachia, people are usually thinking of West Virginia, Kentucky, and eastern Tennessee. But the culture and economic conditions of the Appalachian region extend well into western Pennsylvania and southeastern sections of Ohio. All agree that these two states are important in this year’s presidential election. Under many scenarios the voter outcome in Ohio could either give or deny the White House to Barack Obama.

The 2004 election illustrates the importance of Ohio. In 2004 George W. Bush won the state of Ohio by 119,000 votes. Had John Kerry defeated Bush in Ohio, Kerry would have won the presidency.

Are we tired of poll-watching yet?

Depending on whose results you look at, Obama's lead is anywhere from +1 (Rasmussen) to +7 (CNN), with a median, according to RealClearPolitics, of 3.6% (unless of course you happen to like Gallup/USA Today, which must have been sampling McCain's relatives because it has him up by 4%).

What does any of this mean?  Not a whole heck of a lot, I guess.  The election, as Keith Olbermann continues to remind us, is still a whole lot of days away.  And besides, we all know that the GOP has the ways and means to steal it anyway.  They've done it before.  

But maybe--just maybe--this time such theft might not be possible.  Take a look below the fold for the reason.

Today Michael Carmichael wrote about problems the Democratic Party has encountered in August in the past.  I love history, and I immediately liked most of the article.  I thought the idea of Colin Powell as Vice President was interesting, although I question the logic that dictates how much Powell would bring to the ticket.  I am not qualified to judge Carmichael's statements, however.

Unfortunately Carmichael also discussed the daily popular voting polls in his article.  He referred to the General Election campaign as a "dead even horse race."  This struck me as irresponsible, and not just because today's polls have Obama coming in at five to six points ahead of Mr. Wrinkly.  More significantly I just read an article seconds before called "Electoral Math Charts Updated" by Chris Weigant.  Electoral votes, the ones that count, show Obama with a big lead right now.  ChrisWeigant.com provides daily updates on this.

More after the flip

Here's a key quote from Jonathan's Alter's Newsweek column:

The list of troubling portents is growing long.... and an angry, bunker mentality among aides that one GOP operative, fearing excommunication from Team McCain if identified, describes as "lacking only a Luger and a cyanide pill."

Where Have You Gone, John?

Hello All,I am committed to doing all I can to make sure Michelle and Barack Obama's next address is 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. To help them get there, I am asking you to support my "Electoral Votes Fundraising Challenge".The challenge is simple. Make a donation in the amount of the electoral votes allocated to your state and help me reach my goal of $5,380!

http://my.barackobama.com/...

Ok the headline is a little dramatic, but I religiously read FiveThirtyEight.com.   It's just a great site for someone who believes there's a better way to poll.

But I've been watching Obama's numbers over the past couple of weeks get lower and lower and lower.   Today he's under 300 electoral votes in the projection.  

In my home state of Maine, he's dropped 14 points in a month.  Granted it's one poll, in a state that will most certainly go for Obama.

What the hell is going on?

From today's Beyond Chron.

Yesterday’s Washington Post had a front-page piece on Findlay, Ohio – the “Flag City” – where small-town voters still believe Barack Obama is a Muslim.  What the Post didn’t report is that Findlay voted 2-1 for George Bush in 2004, and in 2006 rejected Democrat Sherrod Brown (who won a landslide victory statewide.)  It’s just the latest example of the media projecting the myth that the Presidential race is somehow close, and grasping for non-existent trends to keep it alive.

But reality says otherwise.  Women and Latinos who supported Hillary Clinton are flocking to Obama, despite the narrative that Democrats are “divided.”  State-by-state polls consistently show Obama on his way to surpassing 270 electoral votes.  Even national polls with Obama ahead by double digits are dismissed as “outliers,” along with the constant reminder that Michael Dukakis blew a 17-point lead (without any context of two very different candidates).  The media won’t admit that the Presidential race is over, and Obama is going to win.

I spend a lot of free time on 270towin.com and think of all sorts of combinations... I am anxious to hear you guys and gal's opinions and see your own combinations.

Some of you might remember the twin electoral maps (map of the US, scaled according to electoral votes) for Barack Obama and for Hillary Clinton  at the MyDD frontpage. I never liked them much, because there was no information on what polls where chosen for each State. Still, for months on end, the arguments at MyDD were centered on the fact that Hillary Clinton was gathering more electoral votes than Barack Obama.

Lo and behold, I opened the front page today, and it shows Barack Obama with 328 electoral votes as opposed to 210 for John McCain. If I do not remember wrong, that is more or less what Hillary Clinton had. It could be that Jerome is more prone to include favorable polls to Obama than before, but still the change is striking, since it's little over a week that Clinton's campaign suspension was announced. Talk of a unity bounce!

The map is below the fold...

A follow-up to the May 26 data I diaried about, here's the June 6 data.  Same notes about 270towin.com and fivethirtyeight.com and that this is TOTALLY subject to change ;p

We've heard ad nauseum about the differences between Democratic delegate allocation and the Republican method, and between delegate allocation and electoral votes.  Bill Clinton has suggested that his wife would have the delegate lead if Democrats chose delegates as Republicans do, and Evan Bayh attempted to use electoral votes as a comparative measure.

Suppose, though, that instead of changing the Democratic system to approximate the GOP or the general election, we changed the distribution of electoral votes in the general election to the approach used by the Democratic Party to allocate convention delegates.  What would be the outcome of that change?

Follow me below the fold for a look-see...

I've been enjoying reading poblano's numbers (e.g. from Monday) on FiveThirtyEight.com and I decided to play with them a bit and what it boils down to, currently, is that there are really only ten states in play...

Obama trails McCain by 8 points

Primary season is all but over, but we still hear much about electability.  There are ubiquitous arguments on who won swing or key states (defined by what suits your point).  We see pretty maps that are at the whim of the latest poll.  Better are poll-averaging algorithms, like Pollster.com, which reduce outlier impact but aren't too predictive so far out.

Then, like manna from heaven, there's Poblano's analysis at 538. Not to usurp his amazing work, but to satiate my own obsessive compulsive curiosity, I compiled 538's data on Obama/Clinton match-ups vs. McCain, added Pollster.com data for comparison, and sought to identify "swing" states based on blue/purple/red and Cook Report categories.  

The goal: To play with 538's data in looking at Obama & Clinton's relative "electability" and to see how the who-won-which-state stuff bears out in current trends.  Results, analysis below the fold.

So I was looking into Hillary's big state "strategy" and found the following quote from "a post-Super Tuesday memo from Mark Penn" at this link:

As super-delegates consider which candidate to support, they will be looking at which one candidate has a base and can win the big states, including the crucial swing constituencies. We believe the impressive wins in NY, CA, MA, MI, FL, NJ, AZ suggest that Hillary is the one who can motivate a strong turnout in November.

Follow me over the fold:

Okay. The Clintonistas and the MSM keep feeding us this BIGSTATESANDELECTORALVOTES pablum, so I decided to see if there was any cycle to their spin. Not so much.

Before I dignify this idiocy, let me state that we just cannot gauge the electoral mood in November this far out. It could very well be that six months with elitist-black-power-muslim-lapel-pin-shunning Obama as our candidate will frighten the bejeezus out of many Americans, as HRC surmises, and give McSame the victory he does not deserve. It could be that the multi-headed hydra of sniper-dodging-NAFTA-touting-Iraq-War-voting Clinton as our nominee will utterly nauseate the electorate, and give McSame the victory he does not deserve.

In terms of the "pitch to the superdelegates", what we are talking about (because it’s what the hair-raisingly disingenuous Lanny Davises and James Carvilles of the world have strong-armed the MSM into harping on) is perceived electoral strength. Doing my own calculations, looking at who has performed better state by state, I’m struck by several things.

I've been hearing it a lot lately: if Obama doesn't win Ohio or Florida, he's toast in the general. Putting aside the notion that he won't or can't win at least one of those two states, let's see what the actual electoral numbers look like. (I used this chart as my reference.)

**Edited**
My original math assumed Kerry had 251 electoral votes in 2004. He actually had 252. This adds a number of new possibilities. I have updated the possible combinations below accordingly.