Opinion: The Ticket’s national electoral map; McCain slips in Florida

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Here’s the Ticket’s weekly look at the national electoral map as compiled by Karl Rove & Co.

A week of the GOP convention and the Labor Day holiday made for just a few polls over the past week.

The only state to change classifications was Florida, where Sen. John McCain’s lead slipped within the margin of error to make the state again a toss-up.

Barack Obama continues to lead nationally with 260 electoral votes to McCain’s 194, and 84 as a toss-up. But note that the toss-up states are still in play for McCain — only in one of them (New Hampshire) does he trail within the margin of error.

Look for more dramatic changes over the next few weeks as state polls begin to take the race’s new dynamics into account. A chart showing each week’s changes since March is published below the jump; click on the ‘read more’ line.

-- Andrew Malcolm

For each state, the map uses the average of all public telephone polls (Internet polls are not included in the average) taken within 30 days of the most recent poll available in each state.

For example, if the most recent poll in Montana was taken on July 15, the average includes all polls conducted between June 15 and July 15.

States within a three-point lead for McCain or Obama are classified as toss-ups; states outside the three-point lead are allocated to the respective candidate.

There is no polling data available for the District of Columbia, but its three electoral votes are allocated to Obama.

Please note: To account for the growing number of polls as we approach Election Day, Rove & Co. has shifted its methodology to consider only polls in a state within 14 days of the last poll, rather than the past 30 days.

Map and Chart material published courtesy of Karl Rove & Co.