Election Prediction: Obama Wins (364)

Obama/Biden 364
McCain/Palin 174

As of 8:30am PDT, my prediction is that Barack Obama will win the election this evening to make U.S. Presidential history.

I have been following the ups and downs of both candidates in the polls for months via Slate's Poll Tracker '08 application on my iPhone. Rather than looking at polls that calculate popularity of the candidates on a national level, Poll Tracker takes the latest poll in each state and makes a estimate of electoral college votes. This, in the end, is how the President is elected after all.

Each state and their electoral college votes are placed into one of three categories: safe, lean and tossup.

Here's how the numbers breakdown and how I ended up with the prediction that Obama will win:

• Obama has 273 electoral college votes that are considered "safe" and another 18 (Virginia and Nevada) that are "leaning" his way. This totals 291. Only 270 are needed to win.
• Conversely McCain has 129 "safe" votes and "12" lean (Arizona and South Dakota); giving him 142 votes.
• 105 electoral college votes are considered "tossups"

Of the 105 "tossup" states, using the latest poll numbers in each state, I predict the following:

• Obama wins: Ohio, North Carolina, Florida and Missouri (adding an additional 73 electoral college votes to Obama)
  
• McCain wins: North Dakota, Montana, Georgia and Indiana (adding an additional 32 electoral college votes to McCain)

So if the "tossup" states fall as predicted above the final election tally will be:

• Obama/Biden 364
• McCain/Palin 174

Obama will win handily. Let the voting begin and (all) votes be counted!