Just for the sake of argument, let’s say McCain pulls out PA (although we’d still say the odds are against this), with all the other ‘decided’ states playing out as currently polling.   This would leave Obama with 265 and McCain with 178.   There are two combinations that would get McCain over the top — he would have to win 7 of the 8 swing states.

By the way, for those that haven’t seen it, anytime your interactive map has 12 or fewer states undecided with neither candidate at 270, you will see a feature called “The Road to 270″ below the map.  This will summarize what each candidate needs to win and it will provide a link to a page (like the ‘two combinations’ link earlier in this post) where you can see every critical path to 270 electoral votes.

1. No Democrat or Republican candidate has won the election while losing both Florida and Michigan
2. No Republican has won while losing both Ohio and Pennsylvania
3. No Democrat has won while losing both Missouri and Virginia

If you’re curious about whether any combination of up to 3 states has ever been lost by a winning Democrat or Republican, head on over to our newest feature, 270toWin Answers.  You’ll also be able to look up the last time a given state voted Democrat or Republican and some other historical election trivia.    Check it out!

Background:  Although it is possible for an Elector to cast his or her vote for someone other than for the popular vote winner in their state, this is quite rare in modern times. As a result, Electoral Votes for a state tend to be “all or nothing”.

Maine and Nebraska have taken a slightly different approach in recent years. These states allocate two Electoral Votes to the popular vote winner, and then one each to the popular vote winner in each Congressional district (2 in Maine, 3 in Nebraska) in their state. This creates multiple popular vote contests in these states, which could lead to a split Electoral Vote.

Mathematically, the popular vote winner of a state must win at least one of the districts. That is why you cannot assign all the district Electoral Votes to the losing party in the state. Note that since these rules were adapted, neither state has ever split their Electoral Votes. in 2008, Maine looks safely Democratic, Nebraska solidly Republican, but it isn’t out of the question that Obama could pick off the 2nd Congressional District (Omaha and its suburbs), gaining a Democratic Electoral Vote in Nebraska for the first time since 1964.

Current polling by the Cook Political Report indicates that it is likely the Democrats will retain control of the Senate, and may even gain a few seats.   At this point, however, it doesn’t look like they will reach the 60 seats needed for a supermajority.

60 votes are needed in the Senate to end debate or filibuster on a bill via a cloture vote.   (From senate.gov:  Cloture is the only procedure by which the Senate can vote to place a time limit on consideration of a bill or other matter, and thereby overcome a filibuster).    Therefore, a party controlling 60 seats (and who can get a party-line cloture vote) has dominant control of the legislative agenda, as it can bring any issue to the full Senate for a vote.

• Your custom maps will be saved when you leave the site if cookies are enabled on your machine
• New default starting view:   2008 Swing States.  More or less based on actual Rudy  vs. Hillary polls right now, so will need some fine tuning as the actual candidates come into focus and the polls become more meaningful
• Cleaned up the presentation of default views vs. the map created by user

More coming soon…

Our new feature for 2008, “The Road to 270″, gives you all the power to map out your own virtual strategy for your candidate of choice.    Based on your custom map of red/blue/undecided states, the algorithm calculates every possible way for a candidate to reach the required 270 Electoral Votes.  A separate page lists all these combinations and related information.

As you might imagine, the more states undecided (tan on your map), the more ways there are to 270.   In fact, the number gets big in an exponential way.  We’ve found that with more than 12 undecided states, the calculation starts taking a noticeable amount of time, and the combinations quickly rise into the thousands.  As a result, you’ll only see The Road to 270 displayed when there are 12 or fewer states and/or DC remaining.

Try it out!