Electoral college watch

A week later (and a week before The Big Day), here we are. (+ means an increase, * means unchanged, – means a decrease)

Obama maintains his significant (if electoral-magnified) lead and lock in all the polls and results. Some sites haven’t shifted much in the last week; most of the others have increased Obama’s lead, but nobody has shown McCain gaining any ground, save in increasing some undecided tallies.

The question, of course, is how accurate this is. I think there is nearly zero chance that McCain could actually win, but the above numbers could be volatile for any number of reasons — the oft-touted Bradley effect, dirty tricks and voter suppression, and lazy Democratic voter turn-out in the face of a “landslide” could all drop the Obama numbers from a few key states flipping back. On the other hand, depressed GOP turn-out and the momentum of “winning” could push Obama up higher, though not, I suspect, over 400 as some have suggested.

Over in the other races, here’s how things are looking (the top number is the current split; the +/*/- refers to the Democrat numbers):

It doesn’t seem likely that the Dems will get their filibuster-proof Senate. That may be a good thing, for folks who like a bit of friction in their government. If the GOP uses that slender hold to restrain the wildest of the Democratic majority’s wish lists, that’s all fine and good. If they use it to try and block anything significant, there may be trouble. (I wonder how the whole “going nuclear” thing will play this coming Congress — I lot different, I suspect, from when the GOP were in near-domination.) 

We’ll see in a week.