2008 Presidential Election Simulation (III): One Week To Go

With one week left, Barack Obama seems to be holding on to his lead. For this simulation I decided to average the state-by-state win probabilities based on realclearpolitics.com and pollster.com polling aggregates.

The results: Obama wins greater than 99.9% of the time. I have him averaging 345 electoral votes with a 95% confidence interval of (298, 392).

All data to the right of the vertical dotted line represent Obama simulation "election" wins. Those few results to the left of the dotted line are wins for McCain. As with my previous simulations, these data represent the results of 10,000 simulated elections.

The chart below represents the current status of the race based on the win probabilities computed from my model. The states are ordered by probability from most likely Obama wins to most likely McCain wins. This demonstrates the challenge McCain faces. The states colored in green are places where Obama currently leads but are the likeliest of this group for McCain to pick off. In order to get to 270, McCain must either win all of those green states: NM, NH, CO, OH, NV, FL, NC, and MO or some other combination of even more strongly blue states, such as PA (which despite this week's broadcast of This American Life, McCain is at the wrong part of the normal curve winning just 5% of the time).

From Chart

These data are a snapshot of what would happen if the election were held today. Who knows what events will occur to change the dynamics of the race in the next week. I am skeptical that McCain can do much of anything at this point to win. Only a low probability crisis or surprise about Obama would likely change the outcome. I will crunch the numbers on election day and examine how close my electoral vote projections are to the election results.