After the front page post today showing a "McCain bounce" in the polls, I noticed that several people in the comments are scared, nervous, worried, etc. Don't be. We're gonna win this folks.
I'm not saying to become complacent. Keep working, keep canvassing, keep phone banking. But why not worry about the polls and this purported McCain bounce? Because as we painfully learned in 2000, it's all about the electoral votes. And by that measure, it ain't looking good for McCain.
A great article by Ernie Barrington of the New Zealand Herald came out today that explains this in better detail. Entitled "Why Obama Will Be President" it details how the electoral map does not favor McCain:
Rather than the national polls, what matters are the trends in each of the states: ie, an average of all the polls taken over a period of time. If these are examined, Obama has about 260 which look fairly strong while McCain has 176. The Democrats also have 46 which are "lean", ie, they are marginal at the moment but could be carried in the election. McCain has 64 which look "lean". (pollster.com).
If all of these "lean" states went McCain's way, he would still come up short - whereas Obama needs only 10 of these states to win.
Then there are about 102 that look "toss-ups": states like Nevada, Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, New Hampshire and even Florida. If there was a swing to the Democrats on November 4, then these states would easily give the election to Obama.
And here is a link to CNN's projected map showing that Obama is ahead: http://www.cnn.com/...
Pollster's projected electoral map also shows that McCain has a very difficult job ahead of him: http://www.pollster.com/
Again, I'm not calling for complacency. But let's put the "McCain bounce" and the polls in perspective. It's going to be very, very hard for McCain to win his election. And these are the reasons that Obama will be our next president.