Opinion: The Ticket’s national electoral map: McCain-Palin gains grow

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

It doesn’t get much closer than this. Thanks to the Palin Bounce or the Lipstick Lift or whatever you want to call it, the tickets headed by Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama are essentially tied in a hypothetical electoral college count based on the latest statewide polls tabulated by Karl Rove & Co.

McCain now leads by one vote in the electoral college for the first time since early June. He has 227 electoral votes to Obama’s 226 votes, and 85 other votes are classified a tossup.

Florida (27 electoral votes), where McCain campaigned Monday, switched from tossup to McCain in recent days to give the Republican the slimmest of leads. McCain drew closer to the Democrat in both Minnesota (10 EV) and Washington state (11 EV), where he now trails by 5 and 4 points, respectively. That puts both states on the edge of being tossups.

McCain has also expanded his lead in several red states, such as North Carolina (15 EV), where he went from a 5-point lead last week to an 11-point lead now.

As noted in the election commentary at Karl Rove & Co.: ‘McCain’s lead may be a result of his convention bounce, or it may be a sign of real progress -- only time will tell.’

To see a chart showing the weekly electoral vote movements since March, click on the ‘Read more’ line below the map. The study’s methodology is also explained there.

-- Andrew Malcolm

To get immediate alerts of all Ticket items sent direct to your cell, go here to Twitter and register.

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 June 15 and July 15.

States within a 3-point lead for McCain or Obama are classified as tossups; 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.

Map and chart published courtesy of Karl Rove & Co.