I'm going with over 300, based on pre-election polls.  However, I won't be surprised if I'm wrong.  I think that hundreds of thousands of Obama voters will be disenfranchised.  It won't be enough to stop his election, but it will skew the electoral vote.  Many hundreds of thousands of registrations have already been "scrubbed" from the rolls in some states, despite the fact that such action now violates federal law.  I expect that the "mistakes" will eventually get corrected, but long after they can have an effect on the election.

I went with McCain with 270.  I think it is possible to see a 269/269 tie, as well.  What happens in the case of a tie?  I don't know.

It goes to the House of Representatives for resolution, where Obama will prevail.

I poked around with some of the toss ups and a lot of them are consistently pro-mccain.  This race boils down to Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.   Though Obama is polling well here, I am not convinced.  I think mccain could get any one of the three, and thus all three, or two out of the three, and hence can win the election.

For McCain to win, he would need to flip at least one state that is considered pro-Obama.  He cannot win merely by taking all of the states that are considered toss-ups, because Obama is already hovering around 300 with the states that are in his column.  I still believe that the only hope he has is voter suppression tactics, but Obama's margin seems too high even for that nasty little game to help the Republicans. 

I doubt that the Senate will be filibuster-proof, but it doesn't need to be for Obama to get most of his agenda through.  And, if Republicans get too obstructionist, Democrats can always pull out the "nuclear option" that the Republicans threatened Democrats with at the height of their power.

This is a tough one for me.  I don't keep up with those southern of me as I should but what I see happening is a nasty recount.

I see that Ohio and Florida were moved into the 'toss up' category today.

Of course, the only way that McCain can win is if voters are suppressed by the multitudes.  It isn't possible that people actually prefer him. 

Sntjohnny, you are ignoring the fact that most of those polls are weighted for "likely voters", but this campaign season will have a wave of very unlikely voters.  Colin Powell is not the only Republican who will be voting for Obama.  BTW, I was including Florida and Ohio in the "toss-up" column when I made that remark. 

Nor will all democrats be voting for Obama. A friend at work who is stingently democratic has admitted that she'll be voting for McCain. It truly may be more of a "toss-up" then the media would like to admit.

I agree, EB.  The racial factor is one of the wild cards, because a few people will lie to pollsters when they think that their response will embarrass them.  There is the so-called "Bradley Effect", where some white voters claim they will vote for a black candidate but really won't.  In this election, there may also be a "reverse Bradley effect", where conservatives are unwilling to admit to strangers that they plan to vote for Obama.  Nobody will really know how things will turn out until election day.  Nevertheless, the polls do seem to show an overwhelming tilt to Obama, and the electoral demographics strongly favor him.  Even McCain admits that. 

The economic crisis seems to have tipped the scales strongly for Obama.  Bad news for the Republicans, but they deserved to get the blame for this one.  They were the ones who championed bank deregulation.  Centrist Democrats share the blame, but they were enablers in this case.  The main opposition to the deregulation mania was from liberal Democrats, and they were overwhelmed by a coalition of centrist Democrats and almost all of the Republicans.

heh, so, if mccain wins it will be because of voter suppression or racism or... any thing but a legitimate reason.

I can think of four profoundly liberal people who will be voting for McCain on Tuesday.  Racists!

I won't make a prediction based on such anecdotes but I know that they are out there.  To my great surprise, one of these profoundly liberal persons is a woman- and deeply impressed by Palin.  And here I was under the impression that Palin was a drag on McCain!

OK.  What you just did was vow not to make a prediction based on anecdotes.  Then you immediately gave an anecdote and implied that Palin was therefore not a drag on the ticket.  The fact is that lots of more objective surveys have arrived at the exact opposite conclusion to your anecdote.

Nonsense.  What I implied is that it may not be the case that Palin is a drag on the ticket.  I didn't make any predictions.  I simply pointed out some simple facts from my experience.  I did say that I was surprised, didn't I?  If I believed everything you said, Cop, this woman- quite liberal- would have hated Palin.

As for 'objective surveys' I really think surveys by the Huffington Post don't really pass as 'objective' and frankly I have as much confidence in the reporting of the main stream media as I do in the objectiveness of the Huffington Post.

Palin had some rough patches but rebounded just fine.  McCain was torpedoed by one thing and one thing only:  the collapse of the mortgage banking industry. 

And this was out of his control.

And of course this economic collapse was the fault of Democrats going back to Carter and more recently can be attributed to the third highest recipient of lobbying funds from Freddie/Fanny... a certain Barack Obama.  Just one more thing not reported by the MSM, who were more then happy to pin it on Bush and by extension, McCain.

Even though McCain was one who actually had put together legislation to prevent exactly what happened.  Oh well, we live in lala land, rather than the land of reality.  I'm used to it.

http://blogwonks.com/2008/09/17/mccain-predicted-fannie-mae-and-freddie-mac-debacle/

But McCain appears to have a lead so far in Michigan.  That would help offset some losses elsewhere....but Obama is projected by ABC news to win the state, so this may be about to shift

Found a CNN map.  Looks like McCain still has a chance to pick up an electoral vote in Maine.

Looks like Penn and Ohio are Obama's.  NC and Va are tightening.  Obama still ahead in Fl.  Obama is now leading in Mich, where he is predicted to win