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Opinion: National electoral map: Drift from McCain toward Obama persists

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As the Nov. 4 general election day nears -- now just six weeks away, which seems like 18 if you’re out there campaigning -- the number of state polls increases. They’re the basis for the National Electoral Map from Karl Rove & Co. that The Ticket publishes regularly.

Polls in recent days continue to show a slight drift toward Barack Obama -- old Republican-reliable Indiana with its 11 electoral votes has slipped from the John McCain column into toss-up since the last map.

Colorado’s nine electoral votes went from toss-up into the Obama column, while Minnesota’s 10 votes went from Obama to toss-up.

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McCain continues to hold the slimmest of national leads over Obama, with 216 electoral votes to Obama’s 215, and 107 in the toss-up category. But, Rove speculates, ‘If the movement toward Obama in national polls continues to percolate down to the states, we could see an Obama lead later this week.’

The study’s methodology is explained on the jump, which also contains a chart showing each week’s electoral vote movements since March. Click on the ‘read more’ line to get there.

-- Andrew Malcolm

Methodology

For each state, the map uses the average of all public telephone polls (Internet polls are not included in the average) taken within 14 days of the most recent poll available in each state.

For example, if the most recent poll in Montana was taken on July 1, the average includes all polls conducted between July 1 and July 15.

States within a 3-point lead for McCain or Obama are classified as toss-ups; states outside the 3-point lead are allocated to the respective candidate.

There is no polling data available for the District of Columbia, but its three electoral votes are allocated to Obama.

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Map and chart published courtesy of Karl Rove & Co.

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