Be Careful With The "L" Word

We're all getting excited, and who can blame us? Barack Obama has been trading at almost exactly 50% on Intrade since he locked up the nomination, but has shot up to nearly 80% in the last week and a half. Analysts are saying McCain has no shot. McCain's own campaign is clearly in emergency mode. He even conceded Michigan's 17 EVs.

But this election is not over. History shows that elections trend tighter as the finish approaches. Obama's lead is generally placed at 5-6%. I don't think it's unreasonable to assert that there's a good chance Johnny Mac could scrape back a few points, and bring him down to 3-4%.

And here's the thing - my model shows Obama's lead is less than 2% in quite a few states. In fact, he would only hold on to his core of 264 EVs, plus Colorado and Virginia, where I show him up by 3.0% and 3.3% respectively. Now this gets him to 286 EVs (interestingly, the number GWB carried in '04) which is plenty to win, but not enough to start your party early.

So I'm not trying to scare you, but there are still a few ways this could go wrong. 538 shows that if Obama loses Ohio, he's only got a 2/3 chance at winning the election, and I wouldn't consider Ohio "in the bag" by any means.

Liberally speaking, VA, CO, NV, FL, OH, NC, MO, and IN are still in play. I pity the fool who's got to win every single one of those states; nonetheless, the fat lady's still not ready to go on.