Electoral College looks better for Obama

Here's a snapshot of what the Electoral College looks like on the Yahoo! News Political Dashboard. Barack Obama is ahead, but what the map doesn't show at first glance is that many states could be in play.

This dashboard map is based on the Real Clear Politics poll averages from Sunday night. If America's vote mirrors these polls, Obama would get 353 electoral votes, far surpassing the 270 needed to win the presidency.  (Note: A new poll out overnight moves North Carolina's poll average to an exact tie, putting Obama's total at 338 Monday morning.)

Yahoo! News Dashboard as of Nov. 2

This doesn't mean John McCain doesn't have a chance. He does -- in fact, a bigger one than this map indicates.  Polls can be wrong. (We've described why here.) The poll averages that populate this map are closer than what the declarative blue and red colors imply.

In nine battleground states the difference between the candidates' poll numbers equals 5 points or less on average.   That's more than 100 electoral votes up for grabs from Florida, North Carolina, Missouri, Indiana, Georgia, Montana, Virginia, Ohio and yes, McCain's Arizona.

Another eight states are considered leaning toward a candidate, meaning the difference between the candidates' poll numbers are less that 10 points on average.  Obama leads in five of those states: Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania.

Even though Obama leads in Pennsylvania now, it's probably a great hope on McCain's map because of the movement there over the past two weeks.  McCain has cut what was once a 14-point Obama lead in half.

The other states are leaning McCain. They include South Dakota, West Virginia and Arkansas.

Obama has a much better Electoral College map to start with when we look at the states each candidate can count on for support.  The states that are solidly in the Obama's column outnumber McCain's by 238 electoral votes to 118.

That means if Obama does win in those states considered bankable, he only has to get 32 more electoral college votes to win the whole thing. Those 32 could be easily made up by any arrangement of states, for example a Pennsylvania/Virginia win would put Obama over 270.

A few poll notes

If fiddling with the Electoral College map is not your thing, here are a few notes about individual polls released over the weekend:

- The final Gallup poll puts Obama up by 11. Gallup notes Obama's lead is the largest they've tracked in the campaign.

- The widely respected Mason-Dixon poll declares Florida too close to call.

- The final Pew poll has Obama up by 6 points.