Two updates to my electoral college maps.

First, in Michigan, the last three polls show Obama leading by 4, 7, and 9 points. While McCain still has a chance, it’s clear the state is leaning towards Obama.

Finally, a new swing state in Indiana. In the last Rasmussen poll, McCain lead by 2, in an Indianopolis Star poll, Obama lead by 3, and the last Rasmussen poll, McCain led by 6. Given the GOP history of the state, some may question its status as a swing state. This seems to come from the fact that McCain is not on board with wasteful corn ethanol subsidies and is for lifting protectionist tariffs that keep more efficient cleaner sugar ethanol out of the country. When Obama talked about people clinging to religion, who knew there were a bunch of people who worshipped corn out there?

This is an incredibly high number of swing states. While it’d be hard to imagine some states voting Republican (Washington, Minnesota) and others voting Democratic (North Carolina), all the states that I’ve identified as swing states have pretty close polls. This suggests two possibilities to me:

1) Swing States beging to break hard for one candidate or the other leading to a relative landslide somewhere in the 300-350 electoral vote territory.

2) We’re going to have to sit a spell to find out the winner. We may not know the winner on election night, we may not know the winner for weeks. I think of the recent Alaska Republican Congressional Primary where results took 20 days to tabulate with absentee votes from out of state. It would have taken longer had Sean Parnell demanded a recount.