Obama vote by state

Here's a list of states, order by Obama vote, with 95% confidence bands for the election-day result. (DC is off the chart.)

At the risk of repeating myself, I believe that the changes in different states are highly correlated, which implies that the order of the states here is roughly fixed. Some states may swap places during a campaign, and some (FL and MT) might move several spots from one campaign to the next, but I would be surprised by major changes to this list during the next four months. Therefore, the states whose results are close to the US popular vote (NM, OH, MI, PA) are far more important than the states that happen to have close races by virtue of nationwide fluctuations (FL, the Dakotas, MT, and so on).

From thinking at this list, I have a hypothesis that this race will be determined by the middle four states -- NM, OH, MI, and PA. Specifically, if Obama wins three of these, then he wins the electoral college, while if McCain wins two of these, then he wins the electoral college. Maybe this hypothesis sounds obvious, but it failed in 2000 (Gore won NM/MI/PA) and nearly failed in 2004 (Kerry nearly won NM). I think that Obama's solidification of IA and his gains in CO have changed the map in a way that's far more material than his more publicized gains in MT/ND/SD.

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