KEY POINTS:
Austin Mitchell, the political scientist, once said of the New Zealand electorate: those who live in the hills vote National, and those in the valleys or on the flat vote Labour. In the United States, those who live near the sea, or the Great Lakes, or are within a day's drive of either, tend to vote Democrat - the rest Republican.
Neither generalisation stands too much scrutiny, yet there is some wisdom in the American idea. The western seaboard of the US (California, Washington and Oregon) and the eastern seaboard (Delaware through to Maine in the north) are largely Democratic. Around the Great Lakes, most of the adjoining states are Democratic or tending Democratic.
The exception to this idea is Florida and Alaska, South Carolina and Georgia, which have seaboards but tend Republican. Most inland states are also Republican.
What is pivotal in this 2008 election is that some of these Republican strongholds are being strongly challenged by the Obama campaign. Although at least one Gallup Poll showed Obama hitting 50 per cent to McCain's 42 per cent, for some time the national polls have shown the Democrats only marginally ahead of the Republicans - about 48 per cent to 46 per cent - give or take a percentage or two. Accordingly the media have been calling this a very close election - just as they did in the Democratic primaries.
Although these national polls have some significance they don't have a huge bearing on the election outcome. It's not about who gets the greatest number of votes nationally. Remember the 2000 election, where Al Gore won the popular vote but lost the election.
What matters is who wins the greatest number of electoral college votes. Each state is assigned a number of electoral college votes - roughly consistent with the population in the state - and it is winner take all in each state election, with 270 electoral college votes needed to win. And this is where John McCain and the Republicans are in trouble.
Rather than the national polls, what matters are the trends in each of the states: ie, an average of all the polls taken over a period of time. If these are examined, Obama has about 260 which look fairly strong while McCain has 176. The Democrats also have 46 which are "lean", ie, they are marginal at the moment but could be carried in the election. McCain has 64 which look "lean". (pollster.com).
If all of these "lean" states went McCain's way, he would still come up short - whereas Obama needs only 10 of these states to win.
Then there are about 102 that look "toss-ups": states like Nevada, Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, New Hampshire and even Florida. If there was a swing to the Democrats on November 4, then these states would easily give the election to Obama.
The critical states which need to be won by Obama are Ohio (20 votes), Pennsylvania (21 votes), Indiana (11 votes), Virginia (13 votes) and North Carolina (15 votes). Colorado (9 votes), where the Democrats held their convention, is Republican but looking competitive. Obama is leading the polls in all these states except Indiana. It is no coincidence that Obama is spending a lot of time in these states. If this trend continues and carries through to the election then Obama will win easily.
Yet the press in the US will continue to promote the national polls and call the election close. They have a vested interest in the advertising revenue they garner from a close election. When Obama won 11 states in a row after "Super Tuesday", it was fairly clear he had an unassailable lead over Clinton, yet the headlines, aided and abetted by Clinton's team, maintained it was too close to call.
Some other factors in this election are the superior organisation set up by the Obama team, his ability to raise funds through the internet and the unpopularity of the current Republican President.
* Ernie Barrington is retired and formerly taught at the University of Auckland.
