Obama leads by 17 heading into the third quarter

What is this? And who is this guy?

This is the inagural posting of a new blog to give a quick digest of the 2008 presidential election. Being a bit of a news junkie I regularly skim the various web sites to collect up a rough, comprehensive picture of the electorate and the likely winner come election day, but others may have more important things to do with their lives and that's where I come in.

There are excellent electoral map vote counters and sources of polls but no single source can be considered to be authoritative. And being a computer programmer by profession and philosopher by avocation, I have a healthy respect for both evidence and doubt. Finally, I grew up as a Cleveland sports fan and have decades of experience in watching football teams blow 21-point, fourth-quarter leads.

Tuesday, October 2008 11:50 AM

As numerous sources have reported, all of the recent trends are in Obama's favor. The upper midwest states ( Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan ) are all either strongly or comfortably trending towards Obama. Pennsylvania has moved towards Obama and New Mexico and Colorado now are both seen as trending towards the good Senator from Illinois.

Other trends are so positive for the democratic ticket that it is difficult for this skeptical, life-long Cleveland Browns fan to believe. Polls show Obama competitive in Indiana, Virginia, and North Carolina, none of which were carried by a democratic candidate in recent memory.

The map essentially comes down to this: Obama seems very likely to carry all of the states that John Kerry won in 2004 plus Iowa and New Mexico. Those plus Colorado (where Obama is now leading ) would give Obama the election. This is amazingly without either Florida or Ohio. And Ohio has been trending fairly strongly towards Obama as of late, as has Florida.

In short, all of the challenges are on the GOP ticket to defend states that George Bush won in the previous two elections.

Football metaphor for the day:

Obama is ahead by 17 points and it's the beginning of the third quarter. Can John McCain's Ken Stabler big-play offense turn things around? Or will Barak Obama's Don Shula zone defense keep the GOP attack machine from scoring big?

Stay tuned.