{"id":146,"date":"2008-10-17T08:41:00","date_gmt":"2008-10-17T12:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2008\/10\/17\/a-close-presidential-race-down-the-stretch\/"},"modified":"2008-10-17T08:41:00","modified_gmt":"2008-10-17T12:41:00","slug":"a-close-presidential-race-down-the-stretch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2008\/10\/17\/a-close-presidential-race-down-the-stretch\/","title":{"rendered":"A close presidential race down the stretch?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Conservative-leaning blogger Matt Drudge pulled out the red ink and the big headlines this morning to highlight a national poll that puts John McCain within 2% (Gallup) of Barack Obama.<\/p>\n

Is the race really that close?<\/p>\n

Bluntly, no. And the reason is simple: Americans don’t elect their presidents by a popular vote.<\/p>\n

We use a system of Electoral College votes, with most states giving their EC tally to one or the other candidate on a winner-take-all basis.<\/p>\n

Which means that McCain is in big trouble.<\/p>\n

In order to win enough EC votes, McCain has to capture all the battleground states, from Nevada in the West to Ohio or Pennsylvania in the East.<\/p>\n

But even as the national polls have tightened somewhat (most pollsters put Obama ahead by 5-6%), the Democrat has actually solidified or extended his lead in many of the must-win states.<\/p>\n

Here are McCain’s problem-states, using poll numbers from RealClearPolitics.com:<\/p>\n

Colorado – Obama +5.8%
Florida – Obama +4.8%
Missouri – Obama +2.5%
Nevada – Obama +3%
North Carolina – Obama +1.2%
Ohio – Obama +2.3%
Virginia – Obama +8.1%<\/p>\n

I think the Republicans will push hard enough before election day to recapture Missouri, North Carolina, and Ohio.<\/p>\n

But Colorado, Florida, and Virginia appear to be slipping away for McCain. And if he loses any one of those, the game is up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Conservative-leaning blogger Matt Drudge pulled out the red ink and the big headlines this morning […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}