Electoral Vote Update with 10 Days to Go

Only 10 days to go until Election Day and here is how I see the Electoral Map:


This is a Obama 286 - McCain 139 total with 147 undecided and this is very conservative. I am only coding as red or blue states that I think there is no way they will go the other way. Of the 10 states I show as undecided, Obama is currently leading or tied in 8 with McCain holding small leads in Georgia and South Dakota. McCain would have to win all 10 of these states AND come up with at least 18 electoral votes in states I am listing as safely Democratic. They are hoping for PA with 21 electoral votes, but at the moment, it is still just a lot of wishing and hoping.

In today's Soccer Dad, Dance Dad Lawn Sign Poll, we had Obama 31, McCain 21. As one of our daughter's has traded in her soccer cleats for her ballet shoes to perform in The Nutcracker, my travels took me to some more traditionally Republican towns, but the gap is still pretty solid. If McCain isn't at least tied in the Philadelphia suburbs, he doesn't have enough voters in the "T" of Pennsylvania to offset the votes Obama will get in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

Some things to note in particular comparing this map to the map I listed two weeks out. West Virginia moved from undecided to McCain. However, Montana, South Dakota and Georgia, all very solid Republican states have had polls that make their outcome much less certain. If Obama wins any of those states, it will be the sign of a landslide.

McCain has actually started getting some traction with the Socialist label being slapped on Obama. It has been effective even though it ignores a lot of facts. Most of the people in McCain crowds cheering when McCain says that Obama wants to take money from small business and spread it around would be beneficiaries of Obama's tax cut proposals. A very small percentage of small businesses have profits over $250,000 and Obama's proposed tax increases are 1-3% of profits above that level. Also, my analysis of their respective Health Care plans indicates that Obama's is a modification of the current employer driven system and McCain's tosses that out the window and creates a much more socialized medical care program with a lot more overhead. But that's just me looking at the facts, so what do I know.