Sunday, November 02, 2008

McCain's Chances of Winning

This pretty well sums up McCain's chances -- unless the polls are just absurdly wrong.
Electoral-vote:The latest national polls put Obama ahead by 7.8 points nationally. The Washington Post notes that in the most recent 159 national polls, Obama has led them all. He also leads in all the states John Kerry won in 2004, giving him a base of 252 electoral votes. He also has led all year in Iowa and New Mexico, bringing his total to 264. Thus he needs to find five or six electoral votes in states Bush won in 2004. Today's polls suggest Florida, Ohio, and Virginia as good hunting grounds, as he leads in all of them. In addition, he has led for weeks in Colorado and is effectively tied in North Carolina and Indiana. He even has a shot at North Dakota and Montana. McCain has to win all of them. If we assume that all eight of these states are 50-50, then McCain has to flip a coin and get heads eight times in a row. The chances of this are 1 in 256. But it is worse than that since a number of these states, especially Colorado, look a lot worse for McCain than 50-50.

At least he can laugh about it.