If you were running a campaign, it would certainly be important to know all the ways your candidate could get to 270 Electoral Votes.   You could then put your campaign’s resources to work in those states that were both required to achieve your goal, and that your candidate had a legitimate chance to win.

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!