The latest "close state" polls at RealClearPolitics.com show a dead heat (as in a real tie, not the silly "statistical tie" the media often refers to in very misleading fashion when results lie within error bounds):
| Colorado | 47.3 | 45.7 | Obama +1.6 |
| Virginia | 46.7 | 46.7 | Tie |
| Missouri | 45.0 | 47.3 | McCain +2.3 |
| Michigan | 46.0 | 42.8 | Obama +3.2 |
| Ohio | 46.0 | 45.5 | Obama +0.5 |
| Florida | 45.8 | 47.0 | McCain +1.2 |
Obama's looking pretty strong in this comparison, though it's important to note that flipping a few of the current electoral state results by a few percentages quickly gives the election to McCain. Our crazy Electoral college system, as we (failed to learn) from the 2000 Florida fiasco, puts an enormous amount of value on states that are close. This distorts the campaigns, forcing them to focus attention on swing voters in swing states a lot more than the rest of the population.
The founders intent was to balance things out, but it is unlikely they'd approve of the current situation because state's autonomy is of far less importance in the modern context than it was in the founding days of the USA.
US History
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