Thursday, September 25, 2008

Advantage Obama

Barach Obama has, according to my model, taken a narrow lead both in the popular vote and in the Electoral College vote based on a number of polls released over the past 36 hours. As has been the case in recent days, the state-level polls are suggesting a closer race than the national-level polls. The national polls released over the past 10 days suggest that Obama has a 3.4 percentage vote lead. However, the state level polls suggest, if anything, that John McCain has a slight lead. While the 14-day decay period for the state-level polls (compared with a 10-day decay period for the national-level polls) may explain part of the reason for this disparity, it is also clear that McCain is maintaining leads in states like Ohio that seem out of kilter with the national percentages. My model averages out these differences with a bit more weight to the state-level polls than the national polls.

Barack Obama has a 1.0 percentage point lead in the national popular vote:

This lead translates into a narrow lead in the Electoral College:

However, as the table showing those close states with a spread of less than four precentage points below makes clear, the race is electron-microscope close in Ohio and Colorado:

Below is the current electoral map showing the currently safe states, (shown as dark red for the GOP and dark blue for the Democrats) and the close states (shown as pink for the GOP and light blue for the Democrats):

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