Memo To McCain: She’s Checking The Sheet Music

With four weeks to go before Election Day, things are looking increasingly grim for the GOP and the McCain/Palin campaign. Given the fact that this race has seen more twists and turns than Six Flags I’m not going to call the race as over but it is increasingly close.

As I have previously written, the House and the Senate are already a done deal. The GOP is only hoping to limit their losses and would be celebrating if they managed to lose 5 Senate seats and 10 House seats.

On the Presidential front things had looked good or at least winnable until recently but over the last week or so things have collapsed badly. Virtually every web site tracking the electoral college shows a heavy Obama lead.

Election Projection has it at 364-174 for Obama.

ElectoralVote.com has it 349-174 for Obama with 15 tied (NC)

FiveThirtyEight.com has it at 345-193 for Obama

270towin has it at 332-206 for Obama

HedgehogReport has it 349-189 for Obama

RealClearPolitics has it at 364-174 for Obama

The average of these sites gives us:

Obama: 351

McCain: 187

Now some people have talked about the Bradley/Wilder factor which is supposed to indicate that white voters say they will vote for a black candidate but then change their mind in the booth.

So lets consider that possibility and apply it to the current figures. Real Clear Politics is good enough to print the polling averages in the closer states so we can use those numbers.

I have seen various numbers on how big this hidden factor is but most do not exceed 5 points so I will use that number, subtracting 5 points from every Obama lead or adding 5 points to every Obama deficit.

The result via RCP is to take the following states out of his camp: Ohio, Florida, Nevada, North Carolina, Colorado and Missouri. It also gives McCain a more secure lead in Indiana.

Obama thus loses 100 EV’s with this factoring which would shift the results from a 364-174 Obama victory to a 274-264 McCain lead. But Virginia, Ohio and Colorado are all right on the edge with theoretical McCain leads of less than a point.

So even if you do make that shift (a big assumption) Senator Obama is still within a hair of victory. On the popular vote front, the RCP average right now has Obama leading by 5.5 points so a 5 point reduction there would still leave him 0.5% ahead, or around 500,000 votes.

In addition to the economic issues over the last few weeks, the debates have largely gone in his favor or at least not against him. The only real issue the McCain camp has going for it is voter discomfort with Obama being President. That fear seems to have been erased, voters are OK with him being in the White House

Obviously anything can happen in the next four weeks, but at this point we are almost to a point where Obama can ride his lead into the White House. Of course, given the events of the past few weeks, it remains to be seen whether this is good or bad news for the Illinois Senator.