I have continued tracking and charting all of the polls in each state and deeming the winner of each state as determined by the median active credible poll. As of today, these are the thirteen closest races that will determine the presidency. I have presented them in descending order of likelihood of a Mitt Romney victory.
(Jump to the senate graphs!)
Mitt Romney's baseline is 170 electoral votes. He needs to find 100 more to win.
Arizona (R+8) - The wild Hispanic voting bloc has long been rumored to live in this state. Many Obama supporters claimed to have spotted it, but it remains elusive in shaping elections.
Missouri (R+6) - Obama was never expected to do well in this former bellwether state, and he isn't, though Rasmussen's recent poll showing Romney up by 11 is a bit of an outlier.
Florida (R+2) - On October 3rd, the night of the first debate, the median poll spread showed Barack Obama up by three points. Today the median spread has him down two. Florida experienced one of the largest post-first-debate swings (5 points). It is interesting to me that Florida has been so competitive given the fact that it has more retirees, more Republican-leaning Latinos of Cuban descent, and more Southerners than the typical swing state. I will be surprised if Barack Obama can win the critical I-4 corridor.
North Carolina (R+0.5) - The median poll shows North Carolina still in play. This is because the median uses some polls from September, during Obama's pre-debate surge. Polls in October show an increasing Romney lead.
With these states and all the other ones that are not competitive, Mitt Romney has 235 electoral votes, only 35 away from the presidency.
Virginia (tied) - Yesterday the median showed a one-point margin for Mitt Romney, though a PPP poll this morning moved the median to a tie. On October 2, the spread was Obama +5. Since then, Romney has surged and Obama has slipped. Should Romney improve any more nationally, Virginia will be one of the first states to tilt to Mitt Romney, adding 13 more electoral votes.
(See more at quibblingpotatoes.blogspot.com)