Obama maintains an overall 7-8 point lead in the national trackers.

Obama maintains an overall 7-8 point lead in the national trackers.

The required swing states are all falling into Obama's column
Fivethirtheight now gives McCain a mere 3.3% chance of wining
and predicts over 350 Electoral Votes for Obama with at least 52% of the popular vote.

Today's Polls, 10/26

While there are a few surprises here and there, once again the theme of today's polls is stability in the race for the White House.

John McCain narrowed his gap significantly in today's , drawing from 9.5 points behind to 5.3. As you probably know, I have a signifiacnt critique of Zogby's weighting mechanism, which assumes that the partisan identification breakdown will be roughly equal to 2004, when about the same number of Democrats and Republicans turned out for the election. Neverthless, McCain also improved slightly in the Research 2000, IBD/TIPP, and ABC/Post polls. On the other hand, Barack Obama gained a point in Hotline and the Gallup "Likely Voters II" model (though not Gallup's "traditional" likely voter model), and remains at his high-water mark in Rasmussen.



If the balance of today's national polls contain better news for McCain, the balance of the state polls show Obama continuing to perform very well in several swing states. Obama now has 15-point lead in New Hampshire according to the Boston Globe / UNH poll, which had generally contained good news for McCain earlier in this cycle. PPP puts Obama up by 9 in Virginia, while two new polls also show him with significant leads in Iowa.

Meanwhile, an Arizona poll for the Democratic strategy firm Project New West shows John McCain ahead by just 4 points there, and a couple of other polls showing a close race in McCain's home state are apparently on the way. In terms of our model, the principal effect of the Arizona polls is really on the Grand Canyon State, where our model remains skeptical of an Obama upset, but rather in terms of its neighbor New Mexico, where our it is now (even) more optimistic about Obama's chances.

Counteracting the Obama trend sightly are new polls in Wisconsin and Missouri, which show somewhat better numbers for McCain than other recent polls of those states. However, that is not enough to prevent McCain's win percentage from drifting downward to 3.3 percent.

Below are the Swing State polls (most recent in yellow highlights) and the news is not good for the McCain campaign for any of their scenarios.

McCain is losing in the states he has to win.

McCain has claimed that Pennsylvania is the key to his chances and claims he has a good chance to shift PA to Red. The polls are all Obama with a double digit lead.

Obama is winning in Colorado, Virginia, Iowa, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Mexico and Wisconsin. Any combination of all of the Kerry states plus Colorado, Iowa, and Virginia will carry the race for Obama and it seems that is almost certain at this point.

In addition Obama now leads in Florida and Ohio

As of today Obama also shows leads in Georgia, Indiana, Montana and North Dakota