Obama Surges Ahead

You're not likely to hear this in the corporate media, but as of yesterday Obama has taken a massive lead on McCain in the one area that truly matters.

The Electoral College (via Electoral-Vote.com)

After finally moving ahead in Michigan, and following some corrections on Indiana, Barack Obama is turning five former Red States Blue (Colorado, Iowa, New Mexico, Missouri & Ohio) and now has a 304 to 221 Electoral Vote Lead over John McCain.

The media would have you believe this is still a fairly close race. If you were to look at the various Gallup Polls between Obama and McCain.

Gallup says that Obama's General Election Numbers are only ahead of McCain by 6 points.

Gallup says that Obama's favorability is only 2 points ahead of McCain's.

Gallup says that Obama is also only leading with independents by 2 points.

But things get a little interesting when Gallup also says that there are clearly more Democrats than either Republicans or Independents

And that a higher percentage Independents apparently plan to Vote for Obama, than for McCain.

If you looked purely at these numbers you wouldn't really see anything all that impressive, but going back through the compilation of state-by-state electoral data that's been made available on Electoral-Vote.com and you get a very different picture.

When McCain secured the Republican nomination he held a significant lead over candidate Obama peaking at 324 to 205, but as Obama moved closer to nomination things became more competitive. Rev. Wrong, Bitter-gate and the Working Class White Voters of Kentucky clearly did some damage in early May, but on May 24th just two days after his win in the Oregon Primary, Obama took a 266 to 248 lead over McCain. This lead was extended on June 3rd after the final Democratic Primaries in Puerto Rico 287 to 227 and has held steady until now where he's moved ahead to 304 to 221.

Technically Electoral-Vote.com (whose main page has been down while I've been composing this post - possibly due to an overload after my last diary on them) is still behind on data for Virginia and has it listed as a tie. however, the underlying poll data shows that Survey USA puts Obama ahead in Virginia by 7 points as of May 18th (The data also shows that New Mexico is a tie!) If you then grant Obama those additional 13 Electoral Votes (and subtract 5 for New Mexico) his actual lead grows even further to 312 to 221 - 90 votes ahead of McCain and 40 Votes ahead of what he needs to become President.

Of course there are no guarantees that the map will continue to look this good for Obama - things could certainly change as they already have several times - but right now, I like the way the trend is looking.

Vyan

Update:Let me just point out that this is not a call to Get Cocky about our chances in November. John Kerry held an even greater lead than this on EVote.com and still managed to lose both Ohio and Florida. In Obama's case what the map shows is that he is barely ahead in five states, Ohio, Wisconsin, Missouri, Michigan and New Mexico (although more recent data shows he is tied in New Mexico and barely ahead in Virginia) the point remains that he will also LOSE if he doesn't solidify his current position in those states. He needs at least 3 out of 5 to win, but 5 out of 5 is better. These are the places he's winning and are putting him over the top, but it's also where he's vulnerable.

Vyan