Another requirement is the counting of the electoral votes in Congress.   Public Law 110-430 has changed the date of this count to January 8, 2009 from January 6, 2009.   This change is only for the 2008 election.

The Electors will meet on December 15 to vote.   If all remain faithful and there are no voting errors, the final tally of the 2008 election will be Obama 365 McCain 173.

One electoral vote (the 2nd Congressional District) remains up for grabs in Nebraska.  McCain has an ever-so-slight lead here.    Nebraskans have never split their electoral votes since the somewhat proportional system was put into place.

If these leanings hold, the final unofficial electoral count will be 364-174.  Our prediction was 393-145.     We will have missed Georgia, Montana and Missouri.

In terms of the Electoral College total, the last two elections have been somewhat of an anomaly in how close they were.   If you look back at the historical maps you’ll see few elections with outcomes within 50 electoral votes.  We’re thinking this election returns to that norm.   We think the outcome, electorally, will be somewhere between Bill Clinton’s re-election victory over Bob Dole (379-159) and Ronald Reagan’s 1980 landslide victory (489-49) that ushered in the Republican revolution that has more-or-less dominated American politics for the last quarter century.

Our map shows 393-145, with Obama winning most of the tossup states.  Perhaps the biggest upset projection is for Georgia.   It is a bit of a reach, but we think the nature of the population (big urban center plus lots of African-Americans) and a liberal early/absentee voting policy could yield this upset.    More broadly, across the country, we think that the “group enthusiasm” created by the social network websites (e.g., Facebook) plus more early voting opportunities will shake off some of the traditional apathy of young voters, leading them to vote in record numbers.   Their seems to be a solid preference for Obama in this group.

As our site URL says, it takes “270 to Win”. If neither candidate gets a majority of the Electoral Votes, the election for President is decided in the House of Representatives, with each state delegation having one vote. Senators would elect the Vice-President.

It is important to note that an apparent tie on election night does not mean that there is actually a tie. The actual Electors meet on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December (December 15, 2008) to cast their votes. Only about half the states have laws requiring their Electors to vote for the popular vote winner. It is possible that an Elector could cast his or her vote for another person. As long as that vote wasn’t for the other major candidate in the race, this wouldn’t be an issue — neither candidate would have 270. However, imagine a scenario where a single Elector in a single state switched their vote to the other party — the vote would be 270 -268. While very unlikely, it has happened before (most recently in 1968, although the election that year wasn’t close). If you thought the 2000 election was controversial, this outcome just might bring the Electoral College system to its knees.

More than likely, the election would remain undecided after the Electors voted. The new Congress meets in joint session on January 6, 2009 to count the electoral votes (this count happens whether the election is close or not). If neither candidate has reached 270 Electoral Votes, then the House and Senate take over and elect the President and Vice-President, respectively.

UPDATE 6/22:   Based on some feedback, we may not have made this point clearly enough:  It is the new Congress, that is inaugurated the first week of January, 2009, that will have the responsibility of breaking any ties.

North Carolina, Virginia and even South Carolina have been fairly competitive in most polls between Obama and McCain.  Since 1968, those states have voted exclusively Republican (except for 1976 when both Carolinas went for Carter).  It will add an interesting dynamic to the 2008 race if those states are once again competitive as the election draws near.

We’ve taken a look at some Census population projections for 2010 and plugged them into the current formula for apportionment. These population projections were made before Hurricane Katrina, so we’ve made a slight modification for that, but otherwise we’ve left them alone.

The real 2010 numbers will undoubtedly differ, and Congress could change the rules for apportionment, but we thought we’d present this early look at what states would gain or lose Electoral Votes starting with 2012 based on those estimates:

• +3: Texas
• +2: Florida
• +1: Arizona, California, Georgia, Nevada, Utah
• -1: Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Missouri, Pennsylvania
• -2: New York, Ohio

No real surprises here – population continues to shift away from northern, industrial states to the sunbelt. Their likely will be more and/or different changes than the above.