Election Update

Time for a little update on where I’m projecting the races for November.

President: In the race between Senator Obama and Senator McCain, the trend is certainly in Obama’s favor. Right now I have him leading 304-234. Of his 304 votes, 203 are safe and 101 leaning while McCain has 132 safe and 102 leaning.

Breaking this into possible trends, if the close states break 2-1 for Obama, certainly possible, he wins 339-199 while an even split gives him an edge of 305-234. Even if McCain manages a 2-1 break in his favor (unlikely at this point), it is a 270-268 Obama win.

So right now I see little way McCain wins, but the race is still in flux.

Senate: On the Senate side it looks like things are moving slightly to the Democrats but not dramatically. Democrats now seem likely to retain 52 seats for sure with 4 more leaning their way (Alaska, Colorado, Louisiana and New Hampshire) while the GOP has  just 36 safe seats with 8 more leaning their way (Georgia, Kentucky, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi (short term), North Carolina, Oregon and Tennessee).

This assumes that Lieberman remains a Democrat.

Looking at the various scenarios, a 2-1 break of the close races for the Democrats could give them as many as the magic 60-40 edge (again with Senator Joe) while an even break gives them a 58-42 edge and even a 2-1 GOP split gives the Democrats a 56-44 edge for a 5 seat net gain.

So best case here for the GOP is if they somehow got the 2-1 split and Lieberman to net out a 55-45 minority.

House: The trend here is harder to read with so many races in flux, so I looked at things from 3 points of view, an even split of close contests, a 2-1 Democrat edge in the close races or a 3-1 edge in those contests.

The even split would give the Democrats a gain of 8 seats for a 244-191 edge, a 2-1 split would give them 17 more seats for an advantage of 253-182 and a GOP nightmare of a 3-1 split would make it 260-175 for the Democrats, a net gain of 24 seats.

Basically there is very little good news for the GOP but, at the same time, the Democrats will not be able to deflect blame if they get numbers like this.