Very Scary Electoral Math; New Poll In Sidebar

Note that I have placed a new icon in the right sidebar. It is a real-time map of the U.S. showing the status of the November elections based on polling. If you click on the graphic, it will take you to a site with more polling data than you can imagine. I will leave this in place through the November 4th election.

Source: Charles Babington, AP Writer

Keep your eyes on Pennsylvania and Michigan.

There are battleground states in the presidential election, and then there are these two, looming larger than most others because they offer such a rich opportunity for John McCain and potential peril for Barack Obama.

What worries Obama, and gives McCain hope, is that both states have hundreds of thousands of white, mostly working-class Democrats who seem wary of Obama. In the PA primary they gave Hillary Clinton a big win over Obama, and now McCain is wooing them hard.

—SNIP—

If McCain carries either state, he could lose several states that President Bush won and still claim the White House. For Obama, a loss in either would put him in a deep hole, forcing him to win numerous states that have voted Republican in recent elections to have any hope of prevailing on Nov. 4.

—SNIP—

There are plenty of other vigorously contested states: Florida, Ohio, Missouri, Colorado and Virginia, to name a few. But Michigan and Pennsylvania are different.

John Kerry and Al Gore carried both in their losing campaigns in 2000 and 2004. So they form an almost must-win minimum for Obama. He would start with the base those two men had, and then try to pick up enough Bush-carried states to put him over the top.

—SNIP—

To be elected, Obama must win 18 more electoral votes than Kerry did four years ago. If he loses PA, his deficit jumps to 39 electoral votes. If he loses MI instead, the gap is 35.

Those are big numbers, because the Bush-won states that look most promising for Obama tend to be small, with few electoral votes.

The possibilities and math can get complicated.

When you look at it like this, the electoral map makes Obama's campaign an uphill struggle from the beginning.