It's crunch time and we're not going to be coy - or equivocal - about our final electoral vote projection for 2008. For this final prediction we have assigned all toss-up states to one candidate or the other. We have also eliminated the distinction between a state that is leaning to a candidate and one that is solidly for a candidate.
When the votes are counted tomorrow night, the electoral votes of every state will be awarded to one ticket or the other with no toss-ups and no difference based on margin of victory. Our final projection now conforms to the harsh reality of American Presidential elections.
That said, there are no changes to the states we indicated in our last projection were in the Obama column or the McCain column. Now they all show up on our map as either solid blue or solid red - the pale shading is gone.
That gave Obama a starting point of 338 EVs and McCain 160 EVs for our final projection. We then had to assign our previous toss-up states (four) and their electoral votes (forty) to one side or the other. Using the latest polling data, some historical trends, the available early voting data and some subjective assessments based on our experience with these states, we made the following assignments:
North Dakota (3 votes): to McCain
Indiana (11 votes): to McCain
Missouri (11 votes): to Obama
North Carolina (15 votes): to Obama
This brings Barack Obama to a total of 364 Electoral Votes and John McCain to 174.
The map to the right shows how we think the race will end up after all the votes are counted. It's nothing short of an electoral landslide for the Obama-Biden ticket.
Now we're going to cross our fingers and hope that we are right.
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