Let's go back to college! ELECTORAL College!

Here are last week's battleground states (by my definition), along with updated aggregate polling numbers (via RealClearPolitics.com)










*-as of Monday PM
**-made a typo last week—this is the right number, sorry.

The bigger electoral picture hasn't changed much since last week. Obama maintains a 10.8% lead in Pennsylvania (it was 11% last week, so statistically identical). That means he can probably count on 260 Electoral Votes going into election night. If he gets those, he would need ten more from the group above. Again, Virginia seems like the best option, but Colorado and New Hampshire would also do just fine. (Or just Ohio. Or just Florida. And so on…)

In terms of these state numbers, the only notable change is that Obama appears to be pulling away in Ohio. There are no other significant shifts. Obama is doing a little worse in North Carolina and Virginia, but, on the other hand, a little better in New Hampshire and Nevada. And this is not just me talking—all the analyses I've read say the numbers are pretty much static right now. (Statis, of course, is good for Obama, since he's ahead.)

McCain goes into election night with 160 probable electoral votes. (And note that this is a generous assessment. Pollster.com has Georgia and North Dakota as toss-ups, and Arizona suddenly seems within Obama's striking distance, with McCain only +6.6%. These are all states I put down as probably going to McCain.) So, McCain will likely need 110 EVs from the group above—that is, a sweep.

One more point of reference. Here are the battleground states, the current %, and the aggregate percentage the candidate who won the state in 2004 had in the week of the election. Many obvious caveats: polling is different now, the electorate is different now, this compares numbers from the week before the election with the week of the election, and so forth. But still, it's interesting (reassuring?) to see that in key states, Obama is doing better than last cycle's eventual winner.












*-no aggregates available for these states, presumably because they weren't battlegrounds; these numbers are my "eyeball" aggregates of the polls, so, they're not exactly reliable