Unless something dramatic changes, Obama has won.

[A Black Falcon]

That said, Kerry was winning the 2004 election right up until it was over, so don't pop the champagne just yet.

Kerry had a late lead, but Bush had been leading in October and before... and he was never anywhere near this far up. It is true that for a few weeks before the election polling showed a much better map (for the Democrats) than we got in the end, though, so you're right, don't relax before the vote has actually happened... but Obama is in a significantly stronger position than Kerry was.

Yeah, I don't want to jinx anything, but the fact that McCain is having to fight Obama in so many "red states" is not encouraging for McCain. And Obama seems to be doing a really good job of rounding up supporters. It's kind of annoying, though, that both sides have started going negative. I had thought both of these candidates would be above that kind of thing, but politics always seems to get ugly.

The great thing about that map is, Obama could lose Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Indiana, Ohio, Nevada, and Missouri (all states 538 is projecting he has an at least better-than-even chance of winning, based on their regression analysis, as you can see on that map) and still win the election, as long as he holds all the Kerry states (as he seems to be doing) and just picks up Iowa (large lead all year), New Mexico, and Colorado... but really, it's looking more and more likely that it's not going to be close and Obama is going to win with a significant electoral majority...

If things don't close, that is. They probably will. But even if that happens, yeah, McCain's chances of winning are just so, so small... between the Bush legacy and the economic crisis, as Weltall said, if the Democrats can't win now...

Considering the state of affairs of this election and the last two, the Democrats should have had an unbroken streak going back to 1992. That they don't shows that the party doesn't organize itself well.

The Democrats have definitely always been the much more disorganized party, and yes, it has cost them dearly... but Democrats don't think too much of Republican levels of absolute party unity really and instead like to let each member of their (congressional) caucus hold their own opinions, so I don't know if it would be possible (or advisable) for them to try to do that.

But yeah, if the Democrats were as well organized as the Republicans, you're likely right about 2000, for sure, and perhaps 2004 as well (if 2000 had gone differently, it'd be very, very hard to predict what the 2004 election would have been like... things would just be so different).