We're going into the final days of the presidential campaign. How do the states line up? How hard will it be for Obama to win? What would McCain have to do to win?
My beloved wife is worried. I admit I am, too. We've had the floor pulled out from under us before.
I console myself with a rational analysis of the current polls. It's worth a try anyway. Makes it easier to sleep.
I took a look at Electoral Vote.com and did some thinking. It looks pretty good, but not certain. How good is it, really?
Let's start by counting the electoral votes in the states where Obama or McCain have at least a 10-point advantage in the current polling. It's unlikely these states will switch before the election. Let's assume everything else is up for grabs. As of today, 10/23, that puts Obama at 260 electoral votes, vs 134 for McCain. That leaves (if I did my math right) another 134 votes to split up between them. Even if they go 50-50, we give 67 votes to each of them and come up with 327 for Obama, 201 for McCain, and it is still a decisive victory for the Good Guys,
But wait -- what really are the chances of the Democrat finding a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory? It's happened before. How does the math have to work out for Obama to lose?
Let's take a realistic look at what McCain has to do to win. He has to prevent Obama from getting a mere 10 electoral votes, in addition to his current solid states. Actually, Obama wins with only 9 more votes. At 269 votes each, it's a tie, and that goes to the House for a final vote. Since the Dems have a majority there, they'll elect Obama.
A minor twist on that -- Maine law assigns electors based on the vote in each congressional district, so McCain might get one Maine elector even if Obama wins the state. So okay, let's require that Obama has to get at least 10 more electors, to avoid the Maine event.
Of the Up for Grabs states (UfG states), there are several that have 3, 4, or 5 electors. McCain can afford to lose, at most, 2 of these. (The only way he can afford to lose three of them is if those 3 are Montana and North and South Dakota, for a total of nine electors.) Other than that, he has to run the board, win every single one of the UfG states. He certainly has an uphill run before him. Rough -- really rough -- but perhaps not impossible.
How about Obama? What does he have to achieve?
Well, there are no less than 7 UfG states that have more than 10 electoral votes -- Missouri, Indiana, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia (!!! Georgia?!) and Florida. If he wins even one of these, he wins the election. Even just one.
The most interesting of these is Virginia. The polls close there at 7 PM Eastern time. By 8:00, the votes could be counted, and the networks might tell us who won Virginia. If it's Obama, it's game over, and he won the White House. Period.
In fact, 6 of these 7 states are in the eastern time zone. The 7th, Missouri, is CST. I believe all but Virginia close their polls at 8:00 local time. If Obama wins any of them -- especially if he wins big, so the counting is obvious -- we could have a short, and very happy, night.
I'll go out on a limb and predict Obama gets 2 to 5 of these 7 states. Even just two gives him a comfortable victory. Five begins to approach the L word (which I won't say out loud), with more than 60 electoral votes, putting him above 320. That sounds like a nice neighborhood.
But let's say the worst happens, and Obama loses all seven of these big UfG states. Can he still win the election?
To come up with his 10 more electors, he has to do what I said McCain has to stop him from doing -- he has to win 3 -- maybe just 2 -- of the smaller states. If Obama wins Colorado (with 9 electors, and where he currently has a 5-point advantage), then he needs only one more state -- any one more. And the list of possibilities is pretty long -- in approximate order of increasing likelihood: West Virginia, either of the Dakotas, Montana, North Carolina (! that's in play???), Nevada, New Hampshire.
Obama has more ways to win than he has to lose. But then, I grew up in Chicago, and I've watched the Cubs for around 50 years, and seen the inevitable fail to happen more than once.
But I'll console myself with the possibility that we could win this time. And we could even win big. Logic says so. But I'll buy myself a bottle of scotch anyway, and schedule to take the next day off from work. Just in case.
It's fitting that the day after the election this year is Guy Faulkes' Day. We either will have had a revolution, or will be in desperate need of one.