Some Thoughts about the Race in July

Barack Obama is commanding headlines in papers as he makes his way through the Middle East. These headlines should continue when he goes to Europe to continue his trip. One of the things that has impressed me is how presidential he appears in the photographs of him and leaders on the world stage. The other thing that impresses me is how people like King Abdullah of Jordan "have requested" an opportunity to meet him. The world and the media are treating him like a winner, and this is a very favorable psychological perspective.

Pollster dot com has a new nifty map up on their site that reviews the current positions of the candidates in the Electoral College. The way this site reads it, the race looks like this:

Obama 293
McCain 24
Toss Up 46

Notably, Obama in this assessment is close to a lock on the Electoral College. Pollster thinks that of his 293 prospective electoral votes, 260 are from states where he leads strongly. If that were to hold true for the next few months, Obama would need only to scrape up 10 more electoral votes to reach an electoral majority. On the other hand, Darth McVader has 97 votes from firmly held states and 117 from states that lean his way.

Gallup Daily Tracking has seen an up-tick in the Illinois senator's support. They currently report the popular vote spread this way:

Obama 47%
McCain 41%

These figures included two days of findings from when Obama started his trip. Those gauzy pictures of Obama at 6'2" towering over Hamid Karzai on the cover of USA Today recently might be a nice souvenir after the campaign concludes, huh?