There is just about 17 days to go till we prepare for the first state precincts to go, and the quad-annual rush to various media outlets to see what the exit polls have produced, and soon a new president will be announced.

This has been at the very least an interesting exercise in our political process. From the underdog in the Democratic party taking on the inevitable Clintons’s re-ascension to the top post, to McCain getting written off every day by the MSM only to claim the crown of the Republican party, it seemed that we would have a relatively civil debate coming into the waning days till November 4th.

But civil it was not. Where Obama’s strategy seemed to be one on policy, the McCain strategy seemed to be one on the personal story. Even though all assurances were made that mud slinging would not happen, more than mud came out. Everything from the rehashing of the Ayres story to crowds chanting that Obama was a terrorist, the McCain plan was to try to install fear into those that might vote for Obama but it seems the plan has backfired.

With just a few days to go, Obama seems to have a much easier path to 270 electoral votes, where McCain needs to run the table in hopes of winning. As of 10/18/2008, thanks to the great minds of FiveThirtyEight.com the electoral map looked like this. Red designates McCain “safe” states of more than 7% of the average polling, Blue the same for Obama, and the rest are up for grabs.

So right now Obama has 259 “safe” electoral votes which means all Obama needs is 11 to put him over the top. As for these battleground states, they are:

MT: McCain +6.4 (3)
GA: McCain +6.1 (15)
AR: McCain +4.6 (6)
ND: McCain +3.9 (3)
IN: McCain +2.1 (11)
WV: McCain +1.1 (5)
NC: Obama +0.6 (15)
MO: Obama +1.4 (11)
NV: Obama +2.8 (5)
OH: Obama +2.5 (20)
FL: Obama +3.5 (27)
CO: Obama +6.0 (9)
NM: Obama +6.4 (5)
VA: Obama +6.5 (13)

Now as you see there is one state that is pretty safe for Obama in VA, and FL, OH, NC, and MO also individually can put him over the top. Even if McCain trends upwards it’s unlikely that he will gobble up all eight states that Obama has an advantage with right now.

Of course things can still happen. People can become complacent. There are millions of people being purged right now off voter registration rolls, there are plenty of problematic and hackable voter machines in service in key states. But one can hope that this election has a descent majority so we can exit this era of Bush quickly.