Who would have predicted, with 5 days until Election Day, that Montana, Indiana, North Carolina, Georgia and North Dakota would be ranked as tossups? Yet that is how the electoral map at www.realclearpolitics.com has evolved to list these perennially red states, along with the traditional battleground states of Florida and Missouri. Further, Arizona is listed as merely "leaning" McCain and is colored suspiciously pinkish.
The grayed-out states listed as tossups, based on an average of polls there, have a total 85 electoral votes that remain unallocated to either McCain or Obama. RealClearPolitics allocates 311 EVs in other states to Obama, 142 to McCain. That's a comfortable margin for Obama beyond the 270 needed to attain the presidency. When forced to a choice of giving the 85 tossup EVs to one candidate or the other, the well-regarded website gives 364 in all to Obama, 174 to McCain; McCain gets North Dakota, Montana, Georgia and Indiana in the end. (Plus Arizona.) Obama gets Florida, North Carolina and Missouri.
Even if it works out for the GOP in the loamy wheatfields of North Dakota, the party will have had a historic scare. For this, Republicans can blame the economy as they fight over whether the choice of the Fargo-accented Sarah Palin also contributed to the gray clouds over the high plains in their final week of campaigning.
