Presidential Forecast - July 13

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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 House Forecast.

Update 7/13: Latest projection: Obama leads 305-233, a gain of 2 EVs from July 9. Movement towards Obama in the larger states, highlighted by the first projections moving PA and MI into Obama-strong, and movement towards McCain in the smaller states.

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: IN and NC move McCain to Tossup.
<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, CT, DC, HI, IL, MA, MD, NY, RI, VT - 150 EVs.
Solid McCain: AL, ID, KS, KY, NE, OK, TN, UT, WY - 58 EVs.

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

DCW General Election Tracker
State	EVs	Open Left	Elect. Proj.	538.com	FHQ	EV. com	RCP	RM	CNN	NBC	....
Date		7/10	7/11	7/13	7/13	7/13	7/13	7/11	6/27	7/9
Obama-Strong (O)		227	207	235	175	183	153	199	153	168
Obama-Lean (OL)		66	57	58	47	56	85	94	78	42
Tossup (T)		77	103	27	167	118	137	18	113	139
McCain-Lean (ML)		81	95	64	58	101	73	59	69	53
McCain-Strong (M)		87	76	151	91	80	90	168	125	136
Obama Total		293	264	293	222	239	238	293	231	210
McCain Total		168	171	215	149	181	163	227	194	189
Obama Est.		335	323	311	308	307	304	295	286	282
Texas	34	ML	ML	M	ML	ML	ML	M	M	M
Florida	27	T	T	ML	T	ML	T	ML	T	T
Pennsylvania	21	OL	OL	O	T	T	OL	OL	OL	T
Ohio	20	OL	T	OL	T	T	T	OL	T	T
Michigan	17	O	OL	OL	T	OL	T	OL	T	T
Georgia	15	ML	ML	M	ML	ML	ML	M	ML	ML
New Jersey	15	O	O	O	OL	O	OL	O	OL	OL
N. Carolina	15	T	T	ML	T	T	T	ML	ML	ML
Virginia	13	T	T	T	T	T	T	T	T	T
Indiana	11	T	ML	T	T	T	T	M	ML	ML
Missouri	11	ML	T	ML	T	T	T	ML	T	T
Washington	11	O	O	O	O	OL	OL	OL	OL	O
Arizona	10	ML	ML	M	M	M	M	M	M	M
Minnesota	10	O	O	O	O	OL	OL	O	OL	OL
Wisconsin	10	O	O	O	OL	O	OL	O	OL	OL
Colorado	9	OL	T	OL	T	T	T	OL	T	T
Louisiana	9	M	M	M	M	M	ML	M	ML	M
S. Carolina	8	ML	ML	M	T	ML	M	M	M	M
Iowa	7	OL	OL	OL	OL	OL	OL	OL	T	T
Oregon	7	O	OL	O	OL	T	OL	O	OL	OL
Arkansas	6	M	ML	M	M	ML	M	M	ML	M
Mississippi	6	M	ML	M	ML	ML	ML	M	M	M
Nevada	5	T	T	ML	T	T	T	T	T	T
New Mexico	5	OL	OL	OL	OL	OL	T	OL	ML	T
W. Virginia	5	M	ML	M	M	ML	M	M	ML	M
Maine	4	O	O	O	O	O	OL	O	OL	O
NH	4	OL	O	O	T	O	T	OL	T	T
Alaska	3	ML	M	ML	ML	T	ML	M	M	ML
Delaware	3	O	O	O	OL	OL	O	O	O	O
Montana	3	T	T	T	T	OL	ML	ML	ML	ML
N. Dakota	3	T	M	ML	T	T	ML	ML	M	ML
S. Dakota	3	M	M	M	M	M	M	M	M	ML
		Open Left	Elect. Proj.	538.com	FHQ	EV. com	RCP	RM	CNN	NBC	....

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: Now only 1 at Tossup, 3 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.
• Indiana: 5 at Tossup, Rasmussen at McCain-Strong.
• Michigan (NEW): 1 Obama-Strong, 4 Tossups.
  
• Montana : EV.com at Obama-Lean, 4 at McCain-Lean. EV.com will exactly follow the latest poll if no other poll has been published within the week.
  
• New Hampshire: 4 at Tossup, 2 at Obama-Lean, 3 at Obama-Strong.
  
• New Mexico: Six 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 - Three now at tossup. Now that we finally have a recent poll, all tied at 43, it's the 2 McCain-strongs that are the outliers.
  
• Oregon - 1 Tossup, 3Obama-Strong.
• Pennsylvania (NEW): 1 Obama-Strong, 3 Tossups.
• South Carolina (NEW): 1 Tossup, 5 McCain-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.