Fifty Individual Elections

If national polls are any indication, the race for president is going to be a squeaker again. But, as the pundits ceaselessly remind us, the national polls may not matter all that much because we dole out electoral votes state-by-state. This interactive map from the L.A. Times lets you assign the swing states (broadly defined) to McCain or Obama. Choose your own (mis)adventure! We try it out after the jump.

If we take these data from the very recent Quinnipiac University poll, Florida goes to McCain, Ohio goes to Obama, and Pennsylvania goes to Obama.

Oregon, Washington, Michican, Minnesota, and Delaware all voted blue in the last four elections, so we’ll give them to Obama. Missouri was solidly red in the last two elections: it goes to McCain. He also gets Nevada and Colorado. People talk about them as being swing states this year, but they’ve voted republican recently.

At this point it’s 258-254 with Obama in the lead. That leave us with four states left: New Mexico, Iowa, Wisconsin and New Hampshire. These data (halfway down the page) show Obama leading in Wisconsin and New Hampshire and McCain up slightly in New Mexico.

In our highly speculative scenario (map below) Obama wins regardless of how Iowa goes. So what’d we miss? Explore the outcomes yourself with the L.A. Times map here (the New York Times also has a good one).