Opinion: The Ticket’s weekly national electoral map; McCain’s bounce gains 2 states

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Here is the latest national electoral map constructed by Karl Rove & Co., which The Ticket publishes weekly as they become available.

Sen. John McCain’s bounce in the national polls has started to trickle down to the state level—he now trails Sen. Barack Obama by only 26 electoral votes, making the race closer now than it has been at any point since early June.

Overall, Obama holds on to 226 electoral votes, while McCain moves up to 200 votes, and 112 votes are a toss-up, a new high in that category. McCain picked up two states from the toss-up column -- Montana (3 EV) and North Dakota (3 EV), likely putting an end to Obama’s efforts to target these traditionally Republican states.

One bright spot for Obama is that a new poll in New Hampshire (4 EV) moved the Granite State from toss-up into his column.

But the largest shift in the race came from two swing states that Democrats Al Gore and John Kerry both won, Michigan (17 EV) and Pennsylvania (21 EV), moving away from Democrat Obama’s column into the toss-up category.

It’s very difficult to see how Obama can get to 270 electoral votes without those states.

Meanwhile, two other toss-up states, Virginia (13 EV) and Florida (27 EV) edged closer to McCain. He now is ahead by 3 points in both states. If McCain has another similarly favorable week, both may move to his column and give him an Electoral College lead.

A chart showing all the weely movements of this ongoing study since March is available by clicking on the Read more line below. The Methodology is also explained there.

--Andrew Malcolm

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 1 and July 15. States within a three-point lead for McCain or Obama are classified as toss-ups; states outside the three-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.