Saturday, February 23, 2008

2008 Presidential Election Preview

For those curious as to what the 2008 Presidential Election might look like, it is important to remember (think Al Gore 2000) that it is electoral votes that matter, not popular vote. For a preview of how the electoral votes might fall, check out this site with recent polls by state for various hypothetical matchups. As of their 2/20/08 polls the results would be as follows:

Obama - 274
McCain - 253

Of course there are always margins of errors in these polls (think New Hampshire), so to get a feel for the robustness of these results, I took out all the states where the margin was 5% or less and categorized them as "Up for Grabs". Those results are:

Obama - 267
McCain - 218
Up for Grabs - 53

So it looks like an uphill climb for McCain, but there is a lot of time left, what with the assignment of the vice presidential candidates, as well as Obama officially sealing up the Democratic nomination.

Oh, and for those still holding out hope for Hillary, she matched up with McCain as follows:

McCain - 327
Clinton - 176

This puts Republicans in an odd situation. If they really want McCain to win, they need to root for a miraculous comback by Hillary. Now THAT'S cognative dissonance.

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