I’ve been saying for a while...it’s all in how VA goes. I live in VA and honestly I don’t feel very good. Not a bad feeling of dred, but I definitley don’t have a warm fuzzy on the situation.
Let’s forget about the popular vote for a moment and take a look at the state by state chances.
After an analysis of the big map from Rove.com and Real Clear Politics.com, my take is this:
Assuming that Mac wins every poll that shows a -5% or better, based upon the slanted liberal biased numbers, I come up with 245 EVs for McCain. That’s counting Indiana, Ohio, Florida, and Georgia in the win column, which were all red states in 2004.
That leaves Nevada (5), Colorado(9), Minnesota (10), Virginia (15), and Pennsylvania (21) with realistic hope of getting the remaining 25 EVs.
RCP has Virginia as a “toss up”, despite showing Zero with a 7 point lead. So, I think Virginia is a good possibility.
That leave 8 more. He can get it by picking off either Colorado, Minnnesota, or Pennsylvania. A poll just came out in Minnesota yesterday that showed McCain 3 points down, despite all other polls showing a double digit lead for Obama.
If McCain gets BOTH Pennsylvania and Virginia, I think there’s an excellent chance he wins the election, and we should have a good idea of that early on the election. If he doesn’t win either, it could be a bad night.
He probably needs to win at least one of PA or VA to have a realistic shot to win and then a combination out of the remaining states I have listed above to get the remaining 23 EVs. I’m hoping Archbishop Chaput’s pro-life pronouncements will sway Colorado Catholics in big numbers to McCain, just in case Colorado is needed.
My prediction is McCain with 295 EVs, by picking off PA, VA, CO, and NV, and the less than stellar Messiah 243.
And in case your wondering, here are just released results from the admittedly flawed Rasmussen Report:
Colorado
Obama 51
McCain 47
Florida
McCain 50
Obama 49
Missouri
Obama 49
McCain 49
N. Carolina
McCain 50
Obama 49
Ohio
Obama 49
McCain 49
Virginia
Obama 51
McCain 47
The poll has a plus or minus margin of error of 3 percent.
Looks pretty great to me!