On July 26th, I laid out my first electoral map. I “pushed” every state, meaning I made a decision on it. I predicted a 286-252 Obama win. I had 15 states as leaners. My map above is the updated map.
7 States were changed between the two maps. The new prediction is Obama 273 McCain 265. Of the seven changes, six of them favor McCain. I explain the seven changes below, starting with the most important change:
Virginia: Changed from Lean Democrat to Lean Republican. Virgina is a Red state which is becoming more blue. It is the only state of the map to flip and it did so do to the Palin pick and bounce. Polling now shows the McCain camp winning this one by a thin margin. The McCain camp drew their biggest crowd of the campaign, 23 thousand, in Virginia.
Wisconsin: Changed from Solid Democrat to Lean Democrat. Wisconsin is an interesting place of politics. I though before that University of Wisconsin would put Obama over the top here. Still, McCain and Palin went to Wisconsin right after their convention. This tells me that their internal numbers are saying something. Still hard for me to see Obama losing this one, but I don’t think it is fair to call it Solid Democrat anymore. It was the cloest fought state in the election of 2004.
New Mexico: Changed from Solid Democrat to Lean Democrat. I debated with myself last time on this one. The polling is just too close to justify that. The most recent poll actually shows McCain up by two points. I see it much more likely McCain wins this than New Hampshire now.
New Hampshire: Changed from Lean Democrat to Solid Democrat: New Hampshire polls show Obama up by even more now that after the very successful Republican convention. Palin is not their type of pick, and it is not in the cards now for McCain to seriously compete in this one.
Montana and North Dakota: Both were changed from Lean Republican to Solid Republican. Both of these states were considered hard wins for Obama. They were in the lean category due to unexpected good results from the Obama campaign. Biden is supposed to go to Montana next week. I would guess this will be his last trip to Montana as he will be needed in other states.
North Carolina: Changed from Lean Republican to Solid Republican. This move is probably due to the Palin pick. Evangelicals love Palin and polling has swung much greater than most to McCain camp. A recent poll shows McCain up by 20 here. While that is too big, it appears safe to call it solid.
There were other things I struggled with in this map. The biggest thing to take that you can’t see in the map is that it is very possible that Obama can win the election while losing the popular vote. If that happens, we will see how many Democrats complain about a rigged election. I suspect none.
