I'll take a shot at reviving the thread with a relatively safe topic. Post your electoral college predictions. Closest prediction wins a cookie.
This will be determined by totaling the electoral votes from states called incorrectly -- lowest error total wins. In other words, if you predict the right electoral numbers but get a bunch of the states wrong, you lose. Use
http://www.270towin.com/ to put it together, screenshot, post.
Predicting that the three closest swing states will be Colorado, Virginia, Ohio, in that order.
Right now, I'd still favor Obama to win about 52-55% (not popular vote, but likelihood of winning). I'd primarily attribute that to three things: McCain's convention/Palin bounce is starting to fade as predicted at fivethirtyeight, the likelihood that the economy takes center stage with Lehman, Lynch, and AIG all in the news (which always favors Democrats), and a superior voter registration and get out the vote machine.
Given that near-coinflip, obviously I think it's a tight race. I think either way, the popular vote will be very tight. I do think that if McCain wins, he almost certainly wins by a slim electoral margin, whereas I think Obama has about a 25% chance of winning by 40-50+ EVs. The reasoning is that I think OH, VA, FL, NV are all still winnable but unlikely; however, I do think that if those
do flip to Obama, at least two or three of them do (most likely OH, VA, NV -- my hopes are lowest in FL); if the economy truly becomes the key issue, all three of those are very gettable for Obama.
But obviously the map I posted is the prediction I think is most likely, with Colorado being the key swing state this year.