Polls give Democrats sizeable lead

WASHINGTON – Barack Obama and the Democrats hold a commanding position two days before Tuesday’s election, with the senator from Illinois leading in states with a total of nearly 300 electoral votes and his party counting on significantly expanded majorities in the House and Senate.

John McCain is running in one of the worst environments ever for a Republican presidential nominee. The senator from Arizona has not been in front in any of the 159 national polls conducted over the past six weeks. His slender hopes for winning the White House now depend on picking up a major Democratic stronghold or fighting off Obama in most of the five states President Bush won four years ago that now lean toward the Democrat. He also must hold onto six other states that Bush won in 2004 but are considered too close to call.

Two factors cloud the final weekend projections. The first is how voters ultimately respond to the prospect of the first black president in U.S. history, a force that could make the contest closer than it appears. The other, which pushes in the opposite direction, is whether Obama and his campaign can expand the electorate to give him an additional cushion in battleground states.

Obama leads in every state that Democratic Sen. John F. Kerry won four years ago, which gives him a base of 252 electoral votes of the 270 needed to win. He also has leads of varying sizes in five states Bush won: Iowa, New Mexico, Virginia, Colorado and Nevada. Were he to win all of those on Tuesday, he would claim the presidency with 291 electoral votes.

Tossup states include traditional battlegrounds such as Ohio, Florida and Missouri, as well as North Carolina, Indiana and Montana, which have been firmly in the Republican column in the past. They account for 87 electoral votes and if Obama were to win several of them, his electoral vote total could push well into the 300s.

These projections are based on interviews by a team of Washington Post reporters with strategists in both parties, the presidential campaigns, state and local officials, and other analysts. The projections also include an analysis of a wealth of polling data on individual races and states.

In the Washington Post-ABC News daily tracking poll, Obama holds a nine-point national advantage, topping McCain 53 to 44 percent. The poll started after the last of the three presidential debates, and Obama’s margin has held between seven and 11 points throughout.

More than half of all voters in the Post-ABC poll say the economy is their central voting issue, and Obama has been the main beneficiary of that focus. He has a double-digit edge on the question of which candidate is better able to handle the economy, and he has had even wider leads as the one who is more in touch with the financial problems people face.

No Democrat has won more than 50.1 percent of the national vote since Jimmy Carter in 1976, but Obama could eclipse that number on Tuesday if current projections hold. McCain advisers said Saturday that they think the race has tightened but acknowledged that the senator has a difficult path to victory, given the economy, Bush’s unpopularity and the sour public mood.

Early on, Obama set his sights on expanding the number of battleground states. He has used his superior financial resources to put Democrats in competitive positions in places where they have not been before. With the largest war chest ever in presidential history, Obama has heavily outspent McCain on television and poured millions into building an enormous field organization throughout the country. As a result, he has many more options to get to 270 electoral votes.

David Plouffe, Obama’s campaign manager, said he has always assumed the race would be close in the end, but added: “We are entering the election with a lot of different scenarios to win the election, which was always our No. 1 strategic goal. We think we are not in danger in any of the Kerry states, and we’ve got obviously about a dozen Bush states that we think are potentially winnable. So, a lot of different ways to get to 270.”

McCain strategists insist that he is still in a position to win. But his margin of error is very small. He is investing time and resources in Pennsylvania, the one big state Democrats carried four years ago where his advisers think he has a chance to win. McCain is currently behind in Pennsylvania, but even if he were to win there and held on to Ohio and Florida, he could still lose if Obama carries the five Bush states where he is leading.

Bill McInturff, McCain’s pollster, offered a counter view by saying that the contest is shifting in the final days and that it is highly competitive. “The race is changing quickly,” he said, “and I believe we’re seeing real movement that is putting this race within margin of error nationally and too close to call in too many states to be able to predict the outcome.”

Obama lost Pennsylvania to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic primaries and some Democrats have fretted publicly that the state’s older population and the issue of race make it a more difficult state for him than many others. Democratic Gov. Edward Rendell said he expects a massive vote from Philadelphia and a potentially strong showing in the surrounding suburbs to compensate for weaknesses in other parts of the state.

Both of the vice presidential running mates – Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for the Republicans and Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware for the Democrats – have been employed heavily in the Pennsylvania campaign. Palin has proved popular among conservatives in the central and western parts of the state, while Scranton native Biden has worked to overcome resistance to Obama in northeastern Pennsylvania.

Ohio and Florida were major disappointments to Democrats in the past two elections, twice providing Bush with his electoral-vote margins. Obama, however, is competitive in both states and will spend his final days working each one.

The Mountain West is another region where Obama has expanded the battlefield. A rising Latino population and other demographic changes have reshaped the politics of states there, with significant increases in Democratic registration in Colorado and Nevada. McCain, who pushed for comprehensive immigration reform, hoped to attract significant support from the Hispanic community, but has fallen short, according to polls. That has helped Obama in Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico.

Obama planted his flag early in two traditionally conservative states – Indiana and Virginia – in a further effort to stretch the map. He appears to have withstood McCain’s effort to depict him as a tax-and-spend liberal, and clearly has benefited from the economic woes that hit hard this fall. He is in a solid position in Virginia and competitive in Indiana. Neither state has voted for a Democratic presidential nominee since 1964.

Black votes are critical to Obama’s hopes in both those states, and the same is true in Georgia and North Carolina, which have even higher percentages of black voters. Georgia appears likely to stay Republican on Tuesday, but North Carolina is highly competitive, based on the patterns of early voting there.