World Leaders Blog

At just hours from the election on november 4th. here’s the picture:

Very simple, Obama wins and is the 44th. US president.

His campaign will be studied very hard in the future due to some very important new strategic moves. In previous elections the country was divided in blue states (democrat) and red states (republican), with a few “battleground” states. Basically, in the last elections the campaign came down to a handfull of these battleground states, each side counting on their safe states. Whoever won these battleground states, or most of them, won the election.

In this election the Obama campaign went in very hard in quite a few safe republican states, and has a good chance of picking up a few of them, even including McCain’s home state of Arizona. McCain on the other hand has been playing defense in supposedly safe states, not really fighting in blue states except for pennsylvania. So, former red states like colorado, New Mexico, Nevada and Virginia are now leaning or for Obama.

As of now the only thing uncertain in the election is voter turnout. Will the democrat voters be so confident that they won’t go to vote? Will the famous Republican “last 72 hours get out the vote” machine work? Or are the republican voters seing their party lose and therefore not bothering to turn out?

One thing is certain, due to very heavy voter registration, mainly pushed by Democrats, the voting lines will be awesome in some areas. But voters seem to be motivated by this election, so most will put up with the long lines and sundry glitches that might happen.

The third presidential debate came and went. Nothing really new happened. McCain had to do something radical to regain momentum. He did show more agression, but he also looked like a grumpy old man. As for Obama, it wasn’t his best debate, but in the end he won just by keeping calm. That’s all he had to do and he did it.

So, what now at less than three weeks from the election ?

Obama, barring some really unforseen circumstance, has won. All the polls give him a 6 to 10 % margin in the popular vote and even more in the electoral college. As of today Realclearpolitics.com gives Obama 286 electoral votes to McCains 158 with 94 as a tossup ( 270 is the number needed to get elected).
As far as I can see all McCain can do is to try and hold the solid republican states which Obama is trying to steal, and lose with some dignity.
More important, even though the Republicans won’t admit it, are the other races, Senator, Congress, Governor, etc. They have to try and minimize the losses. It’s inevitable that a Democratic Presidential victory will flow down to the lesser elections, so even if McCain is lost he will try to do as well as he can to help stem the bleeding.