DCW Presidential Forecast - June 28

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This is the DemConWatch Presidential Forecast, a summary of the best election projections on the web. Please also check out our Senate Forecast, and the House Forecast will be introduced later this month.

Update 6/28: Latest projection: Obama leads 301-237, up 2 from the last forecast of 299-239. 538.com made another major change to its algorithm, assuming that the race will naturally tighten. This had the effect of bringing Obama's state numbers down across the board and changed their estimate of Obama's EVs from 344 to 310, and 538.com is no longer an outlier on the Obama side. But this was balanced out and more by movement towards Obama in a number of states in different projections, especially in GA, MI, MN, TX and WI, giving Obama an overall +2 EVs on average. A history chart is at the bottom of this post.

Map showing consensus of sources. This table will show a state Blue or Red if a majority of the sources show it Leaning or Solid for that candidate. Changes: MI moves to Obama, NC moves to McCain.

<p><strong>><a href='http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/interactives/campaign08/electoral-college/'>Electoral College Prediction Map</a></strong> - Predict the winner of the general election. Use the map to experiment with winning combinations of states. Save your prediction and send it to friends.</p>
Unanimous solid states, not shown in the table below:
Solid Obama: CA, DC, HI, IL, MD, NY, RI, VT - 131 EVs.
Solid McCain: AL, ID, KY, OK, TN, UT, WY - 47 EVs

The sources are sorted by each projection's estimate of Obama's Electoral Votes (Algorithm determined below). The states are sorted by the number of electoral votes.

DCW General Election Tracker
State	EVs	Elect. Proj.	Open Left	EV. com	538.com	RCP	RM	CNN	NBC	FHQ	....
Date		6/27	6/28	6/28	6/28	6/28	6/28	6/27	6/5	6/25
Obama (O)		207	194	172	203	146	200	153	153	153
Obama-Lean (OL)		77	99	57	90	92	84	78	47	54
Tossup (T)		95	77	153	29	137	14	113	138	129
McCain-Lean (ML)		89	83	85	86	70	66	69	84	71
McCain (M)		70	85	71	127	93	174	125	116	131
Obama Total		284	293	229	293	238	284	231	200	207
McCain Total		159	168	156	213	163	240	194	200	202
Obama Est.		334	328	311	310	302	287	286	276	275
Texas	34	ML	ML	ML	M	ML	M	M	M	M
Florida	27	T	T	T	ML	T	ML	T	T	ML
Pennsylvania	21	OL	OL	T	OL	OL	OL	OL	T	T
Ohio	20	OL	OL	T	OL	T	OL	T	T	T
Michigan	17	OL	OL	OL	OL	T	OL	T	T	T
Georgia	15	T	ML	T	ML	ML	M	ML	ML	ML
New Jersey	15	O	O	OL	O	OL	O	OL	OL	OL
N. Carolina	15	T	T	T	ML	T	ML	ML	ML	ML
Virginia	13	T	T	T	T	T	ML	T	T	T
Massachusetts	12	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	O	OL
Indiana	11	ML	ML	ML	T	T	M	ML	ML	T
Missouri	11	T	T	T	ML	T	ML	T	ML	T
Washington	11	O	O	O	O	OL	O	OL	OL	O
Arizona	10	ML	M	M	M	M	M	M	M	M
Minnesota	10	O	O	OL	O	OL	O	OL	OL	OL
Wisconsin	10	O	OL	O	O	OL	OL	OL	T	T
Colorado	9	T	OL	T	OL	T	T	T	T	T
Louisiana	9	ML	M	ML	ML	ML	M	ML	ML	M
S. Carolina	8	ML	ML	ML	M	M	M	M	M	ML
Conn.	7	O	O	T	O	OL	O	O	O	O
Iowa	7	OL	OL	OL	OL	OL	OL	T	T	OL
Oregon	7	OL	OL	T	OL	OL	O	OL	OL	OL
Arkansas	6	ML	M	ML	M	M	M	ML	ML	M
Kansas	6	M	ML	M	M	M	M	M	M	M
Mississippi	6	ML	ML	ML	M	ML	M	M	ML	M
Nebraska	5	M	M	M	M	M	M	M	ML	M
Nevada	5	T	T	T	T	T	T	T	T	T
New Mexico	5	OL	OL	OL	OL	T	OL	ML	T	T
W. Virginia	5	ML	M	ML	M	M	M	ML	M	M
Maine	4	O	O	O	O	OL	O	OL	OL	O
NH	4	O	O	O	OL	T	OL	T	T	T
Alaska	3	M	T	T	ML	ML	M	M	M	ML
Delaware	3	O	OL	OL	O	O	O	O	O	OL
Montana	3	M	ML	ML	M	ML	M	ML	ML	ML
N. Dakota	3	M	T	ML	ML	M	M	M	ML	T
S. Dakota	3	M	M	M	ML	M	M	M	M	M
		Elect. Proj.	Open Left	EV. com	538.com	RCP	RM	CNN	NBC	FHQ	....

Notes:
538 - FiveThirtyEight - Safe and Likely mapped to Strong (O or M), Lean to Lean (OL or ML), Tossup to Tossup (T)
CNN - Safe mapped to Strong, Leaning to Lean, Tossup to Tossup
Elect. Proj. - Election Projection - Solid and Strong mapped to Strong, Moderate to Lean, Weak to Tossup
EV.com - Electoral-Vote.com - Strong mapped to Strong, Weak to Lean, Barely and Tossup to Tossup
FHQ - FrontLoading HQ - Solid mapped to Strong, Lean to Lean, Tossup (Dem and Rep) to Tossup
NBC - Base mapped to strong, Lean to Lean, Tossup to Tossup
OpenLeft - Solid mapped to Strong, Lean to Lean, Tossup to Tossup
RM - Rasmussen - Safe and Likely mapped to Strong, Lean to Lean, Tossup to Tossup
RCP - RealClearPolitics - Solid mapped to Strong, Lean to Lean, Tossup to Tossup

Here are the states that span 3 categories.

• Alaska: 2 at Tossup, 4 at McCain-Strong. Rasmussen's own poll shows McCain only up by 4, yet they still have AK as Likely-Republican, which we convert to McCain-Strong.
  
• Connecticut: Only Electoral-vote.com having it as a toss-up - that likely won't last. The only poll in the last 3 months showed Obama at +3 in late May.
• Georgia: 2 at Tossup, Rasmussen still has it as McCain-Strong.
• Indiana: Rasmussen again the holdout at McCain-Strong.
  
• Minnesota: With Survey USA out on June 16 with a poll showing Obama only up by 1, CNN's projection of a Tossup doesn't look like as much of an outlier. CNN moves to Obama-Lean.
  
• Montana: 538 now has it as a Tossup. 2 Projections have it as Strong-McCain. Last poll was in April.
  
• New Hampshire: Three projections have this former? battleground state at Obama-Strong.
• New Mexico: Five projections have it as Obama-Lean, CNN has it at McCain-Lean. Two recent polls show Obama up by 3 and 8 points.
  
• North Dakota - Two have it as tossup - that won't last. Or will it? There hasn't been a state poll in ND since April.
• Oregon - One of the few Obama states that seems to be closing, with Obama only up by 3 in the latest SurveyUSA poll. 1 Tossup, 1 Obama-Strong.
  
• South Dakota: 538 has it as Tossup.
• Virgina (New): 538 has it as Obama-Lean, Rasmussen at McCain-Lean
  
• West Virginia: 538 has it as Tossup.
• Wisconsin: Electoral-Vote.com is the first to move this former battleground state to Obama-Strong.

We're purposely ignoring Maine and Nebraska CD splits for now to keep things simple. We'll add them in later if we need to.

The overall projection is just a straight average of each projections' estimate of Electoral Votes (EVs) for each candidate. For each projection other than FiveThirtyEight, we give Obama 100% of the EVs in a state that is solid for him, 80% of the EVs for a leaner, 50% of the EVs for a Tossup, 20% of the EVs for state that is McCain-Lean, and 0% of the Solid McCain states. Exact opposite for McCain. For FiveThirtyEight, we use their overall estimate of Obama's EVs, not the state-by-state categories.