Analysis favors an Obama landslide over McCain

October 21, 1:19 PMPolitics RoundupJay Keller

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With two weeks left in the race for the White House, Barack Obama is beginning to emerge as the overall favorite to take this year's election over rival John McCain. Various surveys and polls show between a 7-10 percent advantage for the Democratic senator from Illinois, thus clearing the way for a potential sweep in the popular vote. Many pundits had speculated earlier this month that the race to grab the electoral college might be close due to the impact of the financial crisis on the two campaigns. A closer look into the political landscape today paints a far different picture.

Based on the current polling averages provided by pollingreport.com, Obama is above the 270 electoral votes needed to win. In fact, based on some adjusted calculations shown on this interactive map, the count is more like 273, a total that includes states where Obama leads outside the margins of error in any of the current surveys. Should Obama capture all the states where he is ahead today, his electoral college total would be historic.

For McCain, only 155 electoral votes can be put in his column based on the same considerations. The senator from Arizona and his campaign may evoke history and allude to a scenario much like the Dewey-Truman upset of 1948. But, based on pure numbers, the Republicans cannot really control the outcome of the battleground states.

There are nine remaining battlegrounds: Florida, Indiana, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Virginia, and West Virginia. Of these, eight lean more toward McCain and even though Obama holds a statistical lead, only Nevada will likely turn blue. Again, for this scenario to play out, McCain would have to have upset wins in Florida, Ohio and Virginia and then face tougher fights in Indiana, North Dakota and West Virginia.

In any case, eight of nine remaining battlegrounds turned red in the last two elections while only Ohio was the toughest battleground for Bush and Gore or Bush and Kerry.

The landslide scenario does still exist: an Obama win in three tight battleground states would put his total 113 electoral votes above the 270 needed to win the White House. If that scenario plays out, the total electoral votes would eclipse that of any other president since Ronald Reagan, a remarkable 383. Only Bill Clinton, in 1992 and 1996, had 370 or more to win a presidential election in two decades.

Correction: An earlier version of this article contained a passage that alluded to the fact that president Clinton held the record for the most electoral votes in a U.S. election. To clarify, president Reagan holds the record for landslide wins with 525 in 1984. Other presidents who exceeded the 370 electoral votes were:

Source: Dave Hornstein, Detroit National Politics Examiner