Here is the map for July 1st. Notes are below (click map for bigger version):
Numbers:
- Official count: Obama 245, McCain 160, Too Close to Call 133
- Strong states only: Obama 197, McCain 71
- Weak states only: McCain 89, Obama 48
- Count with “leaners”: Obama 317, McCain 221
- Weeks until the Democratic Convention: 8 weeks
- Weeks until the Republican Convention: 9 weeks
- Weeks until Election Day: 18 weeks
All states with change of status
- Indiana (Weak McCain to Too Close To Call)
- Michigan (Too Close To Call to Weak Obama)
- New Jersey (Weak Obama to Strong Obama)
- New Mexico (Weak Obama to Too Close To Call)
- Texas (Strong McCain to Weak McCain)
- Wisconsin (Weak Obama to Strong Obama)
All states with some sort of change this week
- Arizona – new poll June 26th (even though it has a horrendous MoE)
- California – new poll June 25th
- Colorado – new poll June 26th
- Georgia – new poll June 30th
- Indiana – new poll June 24th
- Kansas – new poll June 26th
- Kentucky – new poll June 27th
- Massachusetts – new poll June 30th
- Michigan – new polls June 24th & June 26th
- Minnesota – new poll June 26th
- Mississippi – new poll June 26th
- Nebraska – new poll June 25th
- New Jersey – new poll June 26th
- New Mexico – new poll June 24th
- Ohio – new poll June 27th
- Tennessee – new poll June 26th
- Texas – new polls June 26th
- Virginia – new poll June 30th
- Wisconsin – new poll June 26th
Also, see the spreadsheet.
Once again this was a pretty good week for Obama, if not as good of a week as the last two. First off, the four biggest states this week were Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, and Texas:
In Indiana, a poll shows Obama with a 1% lead in the state, and is the 2nd out of 3 polls to show such a lead, though those three polls were taken over a 2 month span, so it’s hard to determine a real trend. For the time being, the state falls into the “Too Close To Call” category, but it would be nice to have another poll pretty soon to confirm this result or not.
In Michigan, two polls have been released showing sizable Obama leads in the state – one by 12 and one by 6. This pushed Michigan into the “Weak Obama” category, which accounts for his rise in the electoral count for the 3rd straight week. McCain had been hoping to contest this state, but it is getting farther out of reach.
In one of the few bits of good news for McCain this week, a new poll came out in Missouri showing his lead in that state increasing, contrary to results almost everywhere else (and contrary to a Rasmussen poll earlier in June showing a 1% Obama lead). Like Indiana, it would be nice to have another poll to show whether this is correct or an outlier.
Finally, in Texas, there were two polls this week, though only one has shown up on the pollster.com average thus far, so I’m only using that one right now (though the 2nd poll shouldn’t change things much). The new poll showed McCain with only a 5 point lead, which pushes that state from “Strong McCain” to “Weak McCain” and drops the total number of electoral votes in the “Strong McCain” category to under 100 (while at the same time, Obama added 25 Electoral Votes to his “strong” category via the addition of Wisconsin and New Jersey).
The only other change in polling this week was New Mexico falling from “Weak Obama” to “Too Close To Call” and, like Iowa last week, switching back to that category after one week. This is most likely due to float in the margin of error, and the margin in the state being around 5%, but at times it shows as being under and other times as being over.
There is one other bit of good news for McCain this week (and it shows the state of his campaign right now when this is about the best news for him of the week): McCain has built up a bit of a firewall between the states on his side of the “Too Close To Call” category and Obama’s side, with McCain’s weakest state (Alaska) showing a 3% lead for him. That might help mitigate against Obama taking any more of his states, though McCain is in rough shape considering the next states in line for Obama to grab are Alaska, North Carolina, and Nevada.
However, another bit of bad news for McCain is that he is now down to two states – Utah and Alabama – worth 14 Electoral Votes in which he leads by 20% or more. Meanwhile Obama has 5 states worth 35 Electoral Votes. Given that Bush won 13 states by such a margin, it shows considerable weakness of McCain vs. Bush even in their hard-core red states.
Historical Graph
This week I’m also introducing a graph showing the change in electoral votes over time (click on the graph for a larger version):
As you can see, except for a dip on June 17th, the number of Electoral Votes in the “Too Close To Call” category has remained relatively constant. However, this isn’t due to the actual states in that category being constant as Obama has a clear, almost linear, increase in Electoral Votes over the past 3 weeks while McCain has a steady drop. Obviously McCain will need to reverse that at some point. These only include “Strong” and “Weak” states for each candidate, not “lean” states which are included in the “Too Close To Call” category.
Polling Wish List
Finally, my polling wish list for this week is:
- Connecticut (2nd week)
- Delaware
- Montana (2nd week)
- North Carolina
- North Dakota (2nd week)
States which haven’t had a new poll in over a month:
Connecticut, DC, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Montana, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, Wyoming.
Sister states
These are states for each candidate where the margin in those states are within 1% of each other and are within 3 total electoral votes or 25% of electoral votes of the smaller state of each other.
- Colorado (Obama, 9 EVs, +3.6%) and Missouri (McCain, 11 EVs, +3.5%)
- Michigan (Obama, 17 EVs, +6.5%) and Georgia (McCain, 15 EVs, +7.1%)
- New Mexico (Obama, 5 EVs, +4.8%) and Montana (McCain, 3 EVs, +5%)
- Oregon (Obama, 7 EVs, +7.1%) and West Virginia (McCain, 5 EVs, +8%)
- Delaware (Obama, 3 EVs, +9%)) and Kansas (McCain, 6 EVs, +10%)
- New Hampshire (Obama, 4 EVs, +10.6%) and Kansas (McCain, 6 EVs, +10%)
- Maryland (Obama, 10 EVs, +14%) and Tennessee (McCain, 11 EVs, +15%)
- Maryland (Obama, 10 EVs, +14%) and Oklahoma (McCain, 7 EVs, +14%)
- Minnesota (Obama, 10 EVs, +13.1%) and Oklahoma (McCain, 7 EVs, +14%)
- Rhode Island (Obama, 4 EVs, +15%) and Nebraska (McCain, 5 EVs, +16%)
Electoral-vote.com Map
July 1, 2004: Bush 264 (-22), Kerry 247 (-5), Tied 27.
Changes by election day: Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, and Wisconsin
Today: Obama 317, McCain 221
Total with same EV shift as 2004: Obama 322, McCain 216 (taking into account Florida)
To see the current status, go to the Status of the Electoral College page.
