Now that I swore off the horse-race, let’s take a look at the horse-race
I remember these as being Days of a rough slug for the John Kerry campaign in 2004, and a look back on this blog from four years’ ago reveals some examination of clear structural difficulties that Kerry had — point one: there was no Democratic Party in Ohio in 2004 — Bush was escorted around the state by a slew of statewide elected Republicans; Kerry was escorted by former Astronaut and Senator John Glenn.  The good news for Obama here: In the Great Mid-term shake-up of 2006, Ohio was one of the definite epicenters. This cannot be discounted, and the difference between a “ground game” of out-of-state liberal interest groups versus a “ground game” of neighbors also cannot be under-estimated.
So we Take note of this day in 2004 — Kerry: 238; Bush: 291. Now, compare it with this, the ebb of the Obama campaign: Obama: 268; McCain: 270 (270 is the magic number). (HERE). I do not entirely like the method of this thing — the most recent poll number is always used for a state, no matter its clear and obvious “outlier” status, no matter it be a poll released by one of the parties of a “fly by night variety”. (DFM research had a poll which showed Obama winning North Dakota’s 3 votes, somewhat improbably. Rasmussen came in with one that showed McCain easily winning them. Rasmussen is well known; I don’t know what DFM is.) Also, statistically insignificant margin of error poll results from different polls result in quasi-drastically different results: look back a few days and you will see: Obama: 281, McCain: 230, Ties: 27. But, nonetheless, as I recall from watching the graph in 2004, it does provide a general sense of what is going on in the horse-race.
And we are down to much the same group of states that we were down to in 2000 and 2004, with the addition of Indiana. And… that’s about it.