There’s very little change in the Electoral College projections from what we saw last week, but what change there is is not good news for the McCain campaign.
In the RealClear Politics Projection, McCain is hurt by the fact that Montana and North Dakota are now considered toss-ups:
Here’s how RCP looks without toss-ups, an even worse picture for McCain:
Most importantly, there’s no sign anywhere of McCain picking back up any of the Bush 2004 states not to mention any chance of winning one of Kerry’s states from that year.
The outlook from Electoral-Vote.com is remarkably similar, and also shows McCain having a problem in North Dakota:
And there’s an identical forecast from Election Projection (Obama 375 McCain 163):
538.com, meanwhile is at the same point it was last week:
Pollster shows a small gain for Obama:
And, Intrade’s real-time projection continues to show a strong Obama lead:
From all of this, John McCain’s problem is quite obvious. He’s lost a significant portion of the 286 Electoral Votes that George Bush won in 2004, and there’s virtually no chance that he’ll pick up any of the states that went for Kerry. Given that, it’s hard to see how he can win.
