Prediction Not Good For McCain

Game. Set. Match.

John McCain is in a pickle. A big one. He has lost all three debates, according to both CBS and CNN news post-debate flash polls. Both of these polls were taken just after the debates and featured undecided voters who had not yet made up their minds about who to vote for in less than three weeks.

That’s not the bad part for John McCain.

The bad part is all the polls indicate that John McCain needs some major catching up to have even a remote chance of pulling an upset victory. It’s possible, but highly unlikely.

All the polls don’t really matter when it comes to the horse race. After all, Al Gore was ahead in the horserace in 2000, 17 days out, but lost. (He did win the popular vote.) Polls are a good indicator of where the country is headed, but not all together accurate. The best way to predict a winner right now is to look at the electoral map and the state-by-state data. Well, we’ve done that and it’s not good for John McCain.

Keeping the so-called toss up states in mind, Kill The Cat can now project Barack Obama the winner of the 2008 presidential election, if it were held today. Here’s how:

We have moved both Virginia and Florida from Toss-Up to Obama. The Real-Clear Politics average shows both of those states leaning toward Obama and all polls are outside the margin of error. The other toss-up states remain in yellow. If John McCain were to pull a rabbit out of his ass and win them all, he would still be short the 270 needed and Obama would emerge victorious.

There are two states in the toss-up category that we have given McCain because we feel, ultimately, McCain has them put away. Those states are Indiana and West Virginia. We almost moved North Carolina out of toss up into Obama, but the polls are still within the margin of error there. Now keep in mind, it is still 19 days away to the big day and none of this is set in stone.

But here is the quandary.

The entire war is now being fought in battleground states that Bush won in both 2000 and 2004. Now that McCain has pulled all of his resources out of Wisconsin and Michigan, the only blue state McCain hopes to blush is Pennsylvania, and that’s not reality, Greg. So, McCain is now playing defense in all the battleground states. That puts him in a VERY bad position and the probability he will keep all of them in his corner is dubious.

The plus side to all of this is that voters don’t really seem to be connecting to Obama on a personal level. Fortunately – or un – for Obama, is the voters aren’t connecting to McCain either so they are going to Obama by default; they are scared of more Republicanism. McCain needs a personal message and, like, yesterday.

PREDITCTION:

Obama wins. He will win in the popular vote and the electoral college. The only way all this can change is an outside influence. (I.E. a major international incident or the stocks rebound to well over 10,000.) I could be wrong about all this, but I’m not.

Senator McCain, if you have ever believed in the power of prayer, now would be the time you drop to your knees.