I agree with you on all but one state, Missouri.  I tihnk they'll break they're tradition and go with the loser this time.  

I mulled Missouri in my mind.  I wanted to be conservative and suggest Missouri would go to McCain.  However, I really believe Obama has a slight edge.  He may very well lose Missouri, and it won't make much of a difference.  However, when I think of 100,000 people coming to see Barack Obama in St. Louis it makes me think maybe Missouri will be overwhelmed with first time voters who never cared until now.  Also, I think there is spill over from Illinois.  Obama is getting strong support in states neighboring Illinois.  I think that will matter this year.

moved South Dakota (yes SOUTH Dakota!) to "Toss Up" from "Lean Republican" in the presidential race. Same with Georgia, Montana and North Dakota.  Arizona moves from "Likely Republican" to "Lean Republican" while Louisiana moves all the way from "Solid Republican" to "Lean Republican!"

Wow.

Surprising.  I had seen South Dakota polls move further to McCain.  I of course played it more conservative.  It is possible for Obama to turn these states.  However, Charlie Cook knows his stuff.  

I only hope he is right.

How could this be?

Well most of these polls (if not all of them) tag likely voters and those in a published phone book. They pretty much miss the Cell phone generation and first time voters. If you look at how energized and motivated the Obama ground game is ... connected to those new and younger voters ... well thats a majority that trumps McCain's base.

At the end of this coming election night .... a lot of people, prognosticators & pundits alike will be rethinking their prediction models.... because Obama is going to WIN BIG.

This is excellent news, with just under 90 hours to go until polls open on November 5:

The political landscape could be improving for Barack Obama in the waning days of the campaign. Gallup Poll Daily tracking from Oct. 28-30 shows him with an eight percentage point lead over John McCain among traditional likely voters -- 51% to 43% -- his largest margin to date using this historical Gallup Poll voter model.

Lowell,

I think you meant November 4th.  I see great trends, although I will be very happy if my predicted results comes true.

I think if Obama can take over 350 electoral votes he will bring with him a significant support of new House members and Senators.

OK, I'm officially brain dead from this election, someone wake me up after it's over! :)

I guess I've been reading too many fliers telling me to vote on Wednesday, not Election Day which is TUESDAY NOVEMBER 4 (and always has been the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November).

As a Democratic voter, Lowell, it is customary for your Republican neighbors to remind you to vote the day after the election.

What is great is how the press has been vigilant against these flyers.  I would love them to catch the person who distributed them and put them in prison!  I think they deserve it.  

What also gets me is that I rarely see McCain signs vandalized, but often see Obama signs vandalized.  The only time a McCain sign or sticker is attacked is in the twisted mind of a young McCain volunteer and of course...Fox News Channel!

I think NC will deliver a better margin than people think.  If you look at the latest Rasmussen poll out of that state it shows Obama garnering 35 percent of the white vote.  If we are conservative with our estimates and assume that blacks will only make up 24 percent of the vote (even though AAs are about 27 percent of the early vote) and that ALL of the rest are white voters (which is absurd, but the Alice in Wonderland scenario for McCain) then Obama will get about 50 percent of the vote in the state (assuming he gets about 95 percent of the AA vote).  When you adjust those numbers to a more realistic scenario, you start getting Obama over 50 percent (in the 51-52 percent range).  It will be an interesting race to watch.

This rocks!

On a conference call with reporters just now, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said that the campaign is going up on the air in the final stretch in three states: Georgia, North Dakota, and ... McCain's home state of Arizona.

Plouffe said that yesterday's "rear view mirror" ad attacking McSame would go up in Georgia and North Dakota, and the positive closing spot, which features the endorsements of Warren Buffett and Colin Powell, would go up in Arizona.

I'm not so ready to predict an Obama landslide yet.  Two main reasons:

1. McCain is finally now an economy candidate too.  With all this talk about Sam Wurzelbacher (I know, who's that?) and taxes people who always wanted to vote Republican but couldn't because of the economy might.

2. Long lines.  8-10 hours in Georgia?  Seriously?  Where I live, in Williamsburg, there are two tables and two voting booths for a precinct where as many as 4000 people will vote - ALL ON TUESDAY - God forbid Virginia were to make voting easy, that would be a huge blow to Democracy (Republicancracy).  I worry people who don't realize the magnitude of their vote or honestly are required to go to work will show up at 7 AM, be told the line is 3 hours long, and they'll know they have to be at work at 9 and leave.  Or people showing up at 6 PM and either not knowing they're allowed to vote as long as they were in line or, if they stay there, not getting to vote until 10.

NIGHTMARES ABOUND!

No matter what the polls say, this race isn't over.  Not in Bush's America.  Yet, I am basing this on what the data shows.  What matters is the last few days and the effort of GOTV!

So, national polls put undecided around 6 or 7%.  How do you factor these folks into your calculation or do you?  What if they all break for McCain when they finally make up their mind in the voting booth?  How does that impact the map?

I hope it is a blowout.  But it will probably be very close.  And we may not know for days with all of the absentee ballots.

The article about Liberty University students in WaPo today just got me thinking.

Both Hotline and Nate Silver did a study on this.  In all likelihood, they'll break 50-50.

Might some of the undecided voters vote for a 3rd Party candidate?  Maybe some will skip President and vote for Congress of Senate instead?

That might siphon off enough votes to put Georgia's electors in the hands of Obama.

All of the third party candidates will most likely pick up an only immaterial amount votes.  And I don't expect that any of the current undecideds will go to them.  I would expect the people voting for a third party have made that decision well in advance (though that implies rationality and clearly if you are still undecided at this point, you are by definition irrational).  And there is great interest in this election, so I would expect undecideds to fall one way or another.  Hopefully, it is a 50-50 break.  Well, if I am hoping, then hopefully it is an 80-20 break with Obama getting the 80.

I still fear an irrational outcome though.  Or that evangelicals will suddenly recoalesce into a voting block that defies poll projections.  It's still the future and one can never be certain about that.

I'd switch your Colorado and Virginia Predictions.  I predict Obama barely wins the Commonwealth (maybe by two or three), but comfortably wins Colorado by five or six.  I think there might be a small Wilder effect in VA (nothing near like when Wilder ran, but still a small one), while I think Hispanics in Nevada and Colorado are being underestimated.

* One analyst on cable said young voters have been underrepresented in early voting compared to their numbers.  I hope they don't get discouraged on election day when they have to wait in lines.  I see this as a potential problem. My daughter is one of them. My prime responsibility on election day is to get us to the polls and wait to vote.

* I have been spot watching fox news over the last 24 hours.  I did see them show one Obama speech.  Otherwise fox has gone to strictly anti-Obama propaganda.  

* Just delivered some snacks to the main Obama headquarters in downtown Richmond.  I was stunned by how many folks were there working.

* Saw part of a mccain speech this morning.  His wife and daughter looked like they were about ready to burst into tears.  I don't wish evil on them but that told me something.

* In football this is like being 1 yard away from the winning score.  Either they win or we do.  Don't stop for a minute.  We can rest on Wednesday.  

my own sense is that your estimate is too conservative.

I look at a variety of things, including the early voting pattern, including that this time young people are turning out, the disparity in Hispanic voters that are favoring us, and that the vast majority of polling models are understating what I think will be the turnout levels of young voters, African-Americans and Hispanics.

When I am able to see crosstabs on polls, both national and state, most seem to be using models from 2004.  Occasionally there are some real clunkers, like the AP-=FgK poll that had Obama up nationally only 1 point but whose sample was % evangelicals (2004 had only 23% evnagelicals in nationl exit polls).

I do not think there is a Kerry state in jeopardy, including Pennsylvania.  

McCain does not have a single office open in Georgia - where's his GOTV?

McCain is spending ALL of his resources on advertising, and basically none on GOTV.  That means he has basically abandoned Rove's 72 hour Plan that helped Bush win in 2000 and 2004.

I think what we are seeing in early voting is locking down NC and NV for Obama.

Here's what I have as questions marks:  ND, SD, MT, IN, AZ, GA, and MO.

I think OH will lean Obama - this time it is a Democratic Sec State, a democratic Gov, meaning the ability to manipulate the turnout the way Blackwell did in 2004 is gone.  Further, every attempt so far Repubs have used to try to suppress votes has been slapped down in Court.  McCain spent more than a day there, and I will bet the polling data will still show Obama more than 4 points up.

I think Florida is a done deal - Palin killed McCain in the Jewish community.  Bill C is still popular and appeared there with Obama.  Gore just did an event.  And the most significant endorsement was that of Mas Canosa, head of CAF, the right-wing Cuban group. And consider this:  in 200 there were 1.6 million registered Democrats who did not vote, of which, according to Plouffe, about 400,000 had already voted by Thursday.  Now I realize that in Florida one can vote Democratic on state and local issues and still vote Republican for president, as has happened with large chunks in the past.  But I do not see this group as falling into that category.

I think this remains a wave election, which means most of the contested states will break for Obama.  As of now I would say that of MO and GA, with the additional advertising in AZ I begin to think McCain could lose his home state, and I note that for a Senate matchup in 2010 he trails Gov. Napolitano significantly.   Indiana looks more difficult, but again I think ground game may be key.

Despite the Ron Paul effect (he is on ballot in MT) I have a harder time seeing Obama win MT.

I have a sleeper to watch, and that is Louisiana - there was an LSU poll showing it competitive.  I have not seen crosstabs, so it could have oversampled African Americans.

In past elections I have been doubtful of Democratic ability to maximize turnout on election day.  But remember that in many states, so many supporters will have already voted that it becomes easier to focus on the remaining supporters who have note.

Nationally, I think Obama's margin in popular vote is more likely to be double digits than to be 5 or less.  I am optimistic.  I think his floor is 8%, and I actually am comfortable saying it could reach 12%.  I would be surprised if he is over 55%, but remember, there are minor party candidates who will draw 1-2% nationally, and as much as % cumulatively in some states. A 55-43-2 race is a 12 point race.

Assume briefly an 8 point race, which is what Gallup and R2K were showing in their Thursday samples.   Remember that Clinton won by 5% *43-38) in 1992 and won 370 EVs.  Remember that McCain's national numbers are being pumped up by large numbers in places like OK and AL and SC and UT.  And ask yourself, if you really think your guy is going to lose - your state or nationally - for how long will you be willing to stand on line on Tuesday.  Now contrast that with the feeling that Obama is going to win, that this is an historic election, that you want to be able to tell your kids and grandkids that you participated, that you voted for history.   I think all of this gives Obama an additional boost beyond what is showing in current polling, and totally destroys any conventional thinking about this election.

But what do I know?  I am merely a high school teacher.

Drudge is blaring that Zogby has McCain up in one-day polling.  I think Zogby and Drudge can go f*** themselves, but just curious what you think.  Thanks.

is that he courts controversy. That's really all he's about. So Zogby does a sampling and comes up with a number and Drudge posts it. He puts up the Zogby poll because it is controversial.... but again "what's the methodology?" National numbers don't mean much .... it's all state by state, isn't it? And in each key state the Obama team is organized and energized like I've never witnessed in my life time. And it's POSITIVE ENERGY.

Chuck Todd this morning was really focused on Virginia and a handful of other battleground states. It's pretty amazing but if McCain loses Virginia he's in very bad shape nationally.Virginia is a real Bell Weather this election cycle and I have a much better feeling about VA then I did in the Webb campaign.

What's amazing to me is that the Obama campaign has spread it's GOTV ground game, FAR, WIDE and DEEP. What they've done in Virginia they've done elsewhere and I think we'll see very Positive Results come Tuesday - Novemeber 4th!!

Webb was fighting against a very popular incumbent, and without much money. Obama has the money, infrastructure, and wind at his back.  

McCain seems to be solidifying a little in Indiana and Missouri.  As far as I am concerned, he can have them.  If Obama is winning in Florida, Ohio, and Virginia, and wins Pennsylvania and New Hampshire easily, the race will be called by 8:30pm.

As someone who lives in the swing district in Northern Nevada, I can tell you now that Obama will win Nevada.  By the time the results come in, he won't have needed it.

You left out Jimmy Buffet's endorsement. He's giving a free concert in Tampa if you go to an Obama campaign site and sign up for early voting ....

I mean as big as Bill Clinton is to some Floridians .... I don't know too many of them who don't think they're part "parrot head".