McCain has to run the table

If the election were held today, John McCain would have to run the table on states that are tied or "barely Democratic" according to Electoral-Vote's latest tabulations. The states in question are North Carolina, which is a tie, plus Nevada, Colorado, Ohio, Virginia, and Florida. They're all listed as barely Democratic. He'd also need to hold on to Indiana and Missouri, which are currently barely GOP. Those are long odds.

Fivethirtyeight.com shows similar odds and calculates a 15.6% chance of a McCain win. It's also worth noting that the only Kerry state for which McCain is really still fighting is New Hampshire, and the latest two polls there showed Obama opening a double digit lead. He's still in Pennsylvania too, but has been trailing in most polls there by more than the margin of error.

Republicans have to hope for a major swing the campaigns over the next 31 days. Either that or they have to hope that all the polls are wrong. That seems unlikely. It would require a big Bradley Effect, or a superior turnout for McCain supporters at the polls. I'm very skeptical of the former having a significant impact on the race. The most recent Senate or gubernatorial races between white and non-white candidates show little evidence of such an effect. This isn't 1982.

As for getting people to the polls, for one thing Democrats still report a slightly higher level of enthusiasm for their candidate than Republicans, which should help their turnout. The bigger factor for the Democrats may well be the ground game. Democrats are way ahead of Republicans on registering new voters this year. Also, at least anecdotally from the guys at fivethirtyeight.com, who've visited numerous campaign offices around the country, the Obama campaign offices are consistently active and busy. The McCain campaign offices are consistently quiet. Even though the "enthusiasm gap" in the polls isn't huge, what people say over the phone doesn't appear to be jiving with what's being seen in the field.