Over Fifty

As I mentioned in my last post, the closer we get to the election, the more important it is to look at whether one candidate is breaking through the fifty percent line. The reason that's key, of course, is that if one candidate is above 50, it means that the other candidate can't win, even if all the undecideds break his way. This is becoming a bit of a focus now, with McCain behind in so many places.

Yesterday, McCain's pollster released a memo arguing, basically, that Obama's support in the polls had reached a ceiling and that undecided voters would end up supporting McCain. Another Republican pollster recently made the same basic argument in Salon.com, and actually going even further by arguing that undecideds always vote for the White candidate if one candidate is Black. I'll leave it to others to debunk these claims but, for the moment, let's assume these folks are right and that Obama won't win a single undecided voter. Under that assumption, Obama can only win in states where he is at, or above, 50% in the polls. Taking the Pollster.com averages, here are the states where Barack Obama is above the magic line:

California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, DC, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusettes, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin.

Those states alone are worth 282 electoral votes. Add in Rhode Island (which is missing since it has not been polled much recently and although the Pollster.com average has Obama more than 20 points ahead of McCain here, technically, he's still below 50, so I it off) and you've got 286 electoral votes.

There are two other states that we could reasonably add to this list because a candidate, in practice, will usually win if he or she gets more than 49.5% of the vote (since about 1% will go to minor party candidates). If we make the threshold 49.5 instead of 50, then Obama picks up Ohio and Nevada, bringing his total to 311 electoral votes.

So as the tracking polls contintue to show "tightening," it bears keeping in mind that an average of all the recent polls gives Obama majority, not merely plurality, support in a winning combination of states. If McCain wants to win he's got to get Obama's support under 50 in at least a few of these states. Also, it's worth mentioning that, aside from Ohio and Nevada, the only other state where Obama's polling lower than 51% is New Mexico. Take these three states away from him, and he still wins with 281 electoral votes (assuming Rhode Island).

Steep hill to climb, indeed.

Late Update: Just today, new polls at Pollster.com have bumped Obama's average in Nevada over 50%. Just thought I'd let you know.