Only two weeks ago, the race for the Electoral College was closer than expected. Many analysts claimed Obama had not yet delivered the knockout punch"" they expected early on in the race. McCain kept the electoral race exceptionally close in a nation whose Republican base has become shaky in George W. Bush's two presidential terms.
In light of the recent debates, however, the attitude of McCain's campaign has changed. The recent economic hardships and scare that hit Americans put the importance of our economy well ahead of our foreign policy, and this reflected in a dramatic loss of voters' confidence in McCain shown in the recent polls.
A survey conducted by ABC News and The Washington Post put Obama ahead of McCain by as much as 10 percent. McCain's focus on foreign policy, and failure to adequately address the economy, has come back to hit him hard. Between the economic crisis on Wall Street, the recent debate and dramatic drop in the polls, McCain completely pulled his campaign out of Michigan, a state with 17 electoral votes - an important state considering the majority of states have less than nine electoral votes.
Gaining states such as Michigan and Virginia have given the Obama campaign a big safety net in electoral votes. CNN estimates now project Obama has secured 177 safe electoral votes, while McCain sits on 125 safe votes. The electoral-votes map shown by CNN is broken down into three categories, where the safe states already mentioned are states in which the candidate is winning by a large margin and is more than likely to win. Leaning states are states where the polls are somewhat closer but indicate the state as partial to a specific candidate, and lastly are the toss up states where there is no clear lead for either candidate.
If all the states, safe and leaning, fall into place as CNN projects, McCain will need to win every single toss-up state in order to beat Obama in the Electoral College. This will be exceptionally difficult considering Obama has suddenly wracked up huge leads in Ohio, Virginia, and North Carolina. McCain has a long, Bascom-like hill to climb to get back in this race. With campaign resources dwindling down after a long and hard campaign it will be difficult for McCain to spread his finances and time to enough people and secure enough votes to win the toss up states.
In the meantime, Obama has been playing what Chris Lehane, a democratic strategist and advisor to Gore in the 2000 election, calls ""error-free ball."" The Obama campaign will likely continue to play ""error-free ball"" as long as they're ahead in the polls, but don't expect anything less than an excellent third debate from both parties.
McCain will be looking to make a comeback and his chances are as good as anyones. The final debate could be extremely decisive, considering the stakes. The debate is scheduled to air Wednesday night, and anyone who considers their vote up for grabs, like the toss up states would be wise to tune in.
Mark Jenkins is a freshman and is undecided. We welcome your feedback. Please send responses to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
