I commented on a thread yesterday that Obama was only 1 New Hampshire away from going over 270 electoral votes in the "strong" category.
Ding..ding..we have our New Hampshire!
Pollster.com continues to be the easiest to use, and best of the on-line electoral vote maps. I have to confess I'm becoming addicted to it.
http://pollster.com/
I've been watching the numbers fluctuate for weeks now. But up until recently, many of the Obama or McCain states were in the leaning category.
Over the past week or two, naturally, more and more states have fallen into the "strong" category...Obama's number has been gradually, consistently going up.
Last night, it tipped 270.
He now has 272 ev in the "strong" category, with all the Kerry states now, plus Iowa and Virginia. That puts Obama at 272.
Also of interest is how a couple of red states are now "pink" or "yellow." While I'm still thinking that Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Arizona and Georgia will stick to the GOP column (mainly because of structural problems that still exist within the local Democratic parties, something I feel is the largely ignored story of this campaign...we're still not quite a national party yet, folks!) the fact that the GOP has to play defense there is the best sign of what good shape we're in.
The daily's seem to have also settled into a steady but tighter holding pattern. Zogby is the closest, down to between 4-5% in its national, with R2K showing similar tightening as the final round of GOP faithful come on-board the McCain (or maybe the Palin?) campaign. This will in turn prompt at some point a small bump up for Obama as the last round of Democratic leaners come on board...overall polling still seems to indicate about an 8 point lead.
I'm still sticking to my 10% prediction, but of course, its the electoral college that counts. There, we just need to push it up as high as we can in the swing states, and keep holding on to the blue ones.
Keep up the pressure!