I apologize if this has already been posted.

The AP is now projecting that Barack Obama has won the single electoral vote for Nebraska's 2nd Congressional District.

Nebraska allocates it electoral votes differently. It's two electoral votes (for its two senators) are given to the statewide winner. It's three remaining electoral votes are given to the winners of the popular vote in each of its three congressional districts. Obama won the vote in the 2nd Congressional District.

It's first time since 1964 that a Democrat has won any electoral votes, and the the first time ever that it was split!

http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_page=28 35&u_sid=10481441

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...and the McCain attack is getting personal, desperate and as far from discussing the economy as the old man can get. Sitting in my comfy chair and watching the Sunday morning political shows... clicker in my hand... and touring the campaign oriented web-sites from both sides, I'm getting a little more confident that we might have a real change in Washington.

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There was a rec'd diary up for a while dismissing Hillary because of some new polls in Colorado, Oregon, Wisconsin, Iowa and Michigan.  The states involved carry 50 Electoral Votes.  Hillary  is within the margin of error, close to McCain when they run against each other in those states.

There were some other interesting numbers in the swing state polls of matchups between McCain/ Obama, and McCain/ Clinton.  In the six potential swing states fully matched and reported May 21:

Obama wins one,  beating both Clinton and McCain in COLORADO.

McCain wins two, beating Obama and Clinton in polls in UTAH, VA.  Clinton wins three, beating McCain, and Obama loses against McCain.

Clinton wins FLORIDA, MISSOURI and NORTH CAROLINA.

So for May 21:

Obama  - 9 electoral votes
Hillary - 53 electoral votes

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Earlier this month, SurveyUSA released state-by-state polling pitting John McCain against either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. In each state, SUSA surveyed 600 voters, so in total, 30,000 voters were interviewed for this massive project. This weekend over at Pollster.com, Professors Robert S. Erikson and Karl Sigman of Columbia University run further statistical analyses on these numbers and come up with some interesting results.

What do our results show? First, we pooled the state polls to ascertain the national vote, weighing each state's percent in proportion to the size of its House delegation. We also assign the District of Columbia as a 436th district and assign each Democratic candidate 85 percent of the vote to McCain's 15 percent. With these assumptions, the national popular "vote" is tight as of late February. Obama wins 51.5 percent versus McCain's 48.5 percent. Clinton also wins by an even razor thin margin, 50.7 to 49.3. With 30,000 cases, both estimates are statistically significant. McCain would be in the actual popular vote lead less than one time in 20.

That being said, our simulations yield a 88% chance of Obama beating McCain (with 306 Electoral College votes on average versus 233 for McCain), and a 74% chance of Hillary beating McCain (with 285 Electoral College votes on average versus 253 for McCain). About one percent of our simulated outcomes were Electoral College ties. (We ignored within-state variation in Maine and Nebraska, which divide their electoral votes by district.)

On the one hand, we find the expected numbers of electoral votes (the average from the simulations) for Obama or Clinton to be slightly higher than SurveyUSA reports. On the other hand, there is sufficient variance in the outcomes, so that McCain wins a nontrivial portion of the simulations, even with Obama as the opponent. Our two million simulations remind us that the popular vote winner is not always the Electoral College winner, although probably due mainly to chance -- the lottery aspect of the Electoral College -- and not any identifiable partisan bias in the 2008 Electoral College.

It would be wrong to think on the basis of these numbers that the Democrats necessarily have a 74 percent or even 88 percent chance of landing the presidency this fall. While SurveyUSA has done a very good job at pegging results in recent years and their numbers largely pass a smell test for validity, these numbers come a long way away from election day. With so many intervening events to come -- we cannot even begin to think what effect a brokered convention might have on the overall populace -- and the great likelihood that voters will become even more interested and knowledgeable about the campaigns, numbers will undoubtedly shift between the early spring and the late fall.

That said, these numbers are at least comforting at a time when a lot of folks are exceedingly willing to write this election off already as yet another in a long series of disappointments for the Democrats. If we do not allow ourselves to be divided, we truly have a great opportunity to win in 2008 -- and in fact to win with more than 50.1 percent of the popular vote for the first time in more than 40 years. So the time is not now to take our eyes off the ball.

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SurveyUSA has conducted polling across the country with interviews of 600 registered voters in each of the 50 states, or 30,000 total interviews, pitting both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama against John McCain. The resulting electoral college maps look like this (click on them to enlarge):

Hillary Clinton v. John McCain

Barack Obama v. John McCain

Crunching the numbers on an electoral vote counter, I come up with 280 electoral votes for Obama and 276 electoral votes for Clinton in matchups against McCain -- so not a terribly large difference. The maps don't look entirely similar. Obama fairs much better in the West than Clinton, while Clinton performs better in traditionally Democratic states in the North (though not, interestingly enough, in the Rust Belt state of Michigan). Both Obama and Clinton put new states on the map for the Democrats that weren't there in the last two elections. In the case of Obama, states like Colorado, Virginia, Nevada and even apparently North Dakota (though I'll believe that one when I see it); in the case of Clinton, West Virginia, Arkansas, and Florida.

Of course this is very early in the cycle, and these numbers are highly speculative. A potential Democratic nominee is not a Democratic nominee, and polling eight months out from an election day isn't traditionally the greatest predictor of future results. That said, this polling does pass the smell test in terms of the types of states that each candidate has strength in, and what's more it does underscore the great likelihood that either Clinton or Obama would have a good shot at winning the presidency were they nominated.

Anyway, we should know more later today when SUSA actually posts the specific numbers from each state. But for now, what are your thoughts?

Update [2008-3-6 14:55:45 by Jonathan Singer]: The full data is now available at SurveyUSA's website. Note that the polling has Obama picking up a couple of congressional districts, and thus a couple of extra electoral votes, in Nebraska (thus I have changed the totals above).

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