An Average Prognosticator's View of the Shape of the Electoral College on October 14

I thought it might be interesting to get a sense of the basic current view of Internet prognosticators of the Electoral College outcomes. Three Blue Dudes provides an overview to 82 sites on the web that use various methods to project trends in the Electoral College. Twenty-four of those web sites updated their projections yesterday, October 14. Of those 24 sites, all gave Obama a large advantage; only one, Marc Ambinder, gave Obama less than the 270 electoral votes he needs in the Electoral College; and 21, including Karl Rove, gave Obama more than 300 electoral votes. (Rove's analysis of the Electoral College gives Obama 313 electoral votes, McCain 174, and includes 51 toss-up votes.) The average Electoral College projections for the 24 sites that updated their projections yesterday were these:

Obama 363.5
McCain 179.4

Eleven of the 24 sites included estimates of toss-ups in their projections. Those 11 sites had an average 51.7 toss-up electoral votes.

Three weeks ago, I conducted a similar analysis of data from September 23 from 3 Blue Dudes. In the last three weeks, Obama has increased his average number of Electoral Votes as predicted on updated projection sites on the Internet by more than one-third (38.5%) and McCain's numbers have diminished by nearly one quarter (23.6%). These numbers may suggest that Obama's surge in the Electoral College not only reflects the movement of toss-up but also McCain states into his column during the last three weeks.

For those of you who worry that we are going to get overconfident of victory, work hard to secure our victory on November 4. For those of you who are confident of victory, work hard to make it a landslide on November 4.