Sidebar Polls

For the final nine days before the election, I've put four poll trends in the right column. The first is the national trend line--that should be obvious enough. The next three are the three states with which Obama can win the election: Iowa, Colorado, and New Mexico. If Obama wins all the Kerry states, he only needs these three Bush '04 states to flip and he'll have 273 electoral college votes and the White House. (That assumes Obama carries all the Kerry states. At present, the closest flip for McCain is in New Hampshire, where he trails by a poll average of 6 points.) The last state is Georgia, my "canary-in-a-coal-mine" state. If Obama's trend line catches McCain's here, it will be landslide time. If he wins Georgia, he's got a shot at 400.

Obama is closer to McCain in Georgia than McCain is to Obama in IA, CO, or NM.

Currently:

US: +9.0%
IA: +11.5%
CO: +6.7%
NM: +6.5%
GA: -4.0%