Live by the Electoral College, Die by the Electoral College...

Of course I have been complaining about what a horrible choice Sarah Palin is for poor John McCain...   

but before you get to worried about Palin being one heartbeat away from starting the End of Days,  let's remind ourselves how a president is actually elected in the US.    Candidates get a certain number of votes (270) from the ' electoral college', a body of state representatives that chooses who they vote for based on which candidate wins the popular vote in their individual state.  If you win by one vote in a state, you get 100% of the state's electoral votes. 

There are a total of 538,  you need 270 votes to win the presidency.  As we recall from 2000 and 2004,  the breakdown of states won by either the republican or democrats was very very close,  basically it came down to just one state each time (Florida in '00 and Ohio in '04).

This year many of the national polls have shown that McCain has been close to Obama, and even has led at a few points of time (Before the economy meltdown at least)....

So I was curious to see what the current projections and polls show for the electoral college.  There's a good website called -  http://www.electoral-vote.com/

Check out their projection, based on current state by state polls:

Obama 349  McCain 174  Ties 15

a key point to note is that Obama is currently leading or very close to it in 8 states that Bush had carried in '04:

CO

FL

IA

MO

NV

NM

OH

VA

so even if he gets only one or two of those, he'll still win.  Another way of looking at it is based on the likelyhood of either side winning the state based on how big the current lead is in each state:

Strong Dem (207)

Weak Dem (97)

Barely Dem (45)

Exactly tied (15)

Barely GOP (11)

Weak GOP (63)

Strong GOP (100) So as of right now, even if Obama only wins the 'Strong Dem' states and about 3/4 of the 'Weak Dem' states, without winning any of the 'barely' ones, he's in. 

Of course anything can happen at the debate tonight,  but I'd like to think that the Palin's nonsensical attacks and McCains desperatate stunts won't be enough to over turn this thing...  let's keep our fingers crossed.

ps, if you want more reason to know why Palin is unfit to be president,  watch this:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/27057346#27057346