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!

“I use this site so much with my 5th grade Early American History classes. I love that we can learn about previous elections as well as each state’s voting history. My SMART Board fully features the content of your site.

You have made what can be a very daunting subject of learning come to life! They really “get it” now and have loved experimenting with the election process with 270towin at home with their parents. Thank you for such a great learning tool.”

–SK, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan

We get a decent number of notes like the above from Educators (and others). We appreciate the compliments, and hope that many will benefit from using 27otoWin in 2008.

If you find the resources on 270toWin helpful, we’d appreciate your support to help us offset the programming and site hosting costs needed to keep this thing going as a free site.

If you’d like to help, just click the “Donate” button above the interactive map on our home page. Thanks!

A touchscreen version of the 2008 interactive 270toWin map is on display at the McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum in Chicago. The map is part of the “Vote4Me! Inside a Presidental Election” exhibit, which will be at the museum through November 9, 2008. Admission is free through the end of 2007.

The Vote4Me exhibit is intended to help visitors understand the election process, including the all-important 270 Electoral Votes needed to win the Presidency.

We’ve added a number of cool features to 270toWin for the 2008 election.   We’ll use our new blog to highlight some of them, discuss interesting Electoral College history and trivia,  and address other issues that come up between now and November 4, 2008.