...coming down the stretch..."state of the race"

The Washington Post states Obama holds a commanding position, standing likely to draw an Electoral College majority and win the presidency.

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.

Downballot Democrats are seeking larger majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, where some dare whisper the Democrats could hold 60 seats and thus a filibuster-proof majority.

Voter turnout may be the highest it has been in decades, possibly a century, according to Seth Borenstein of the AP:

Soaring early voting levels hint at a big turnout, but that could just be the same voters casting ballots earlier instead of more voters hitting the polls. Weather should generally be favorable, according to forecasts.

What early voting numbers mean and how much of the youth and Hispanic votes turn out are the big factors political scientists look at when trying to predict how many eligible Americans will vote.

Michael McDonald of George Mason University is so optimistic he's predicting the highest level in a century.

"We're going to definitely beat the turnout rate in 2004, the question is by how much," McDonald said. "We have a chance to beat the 1960 turnout rate."

"It's not just an election of a generation, it's an election of generations with an 's'," McDonald said Friday.

He's not alone. The dean of voting turnout predictions, Curtis Gans, director of the nonpartisan Committee for the Study of the American Electorate at American University, this week amped up his turnout forecast. Initially he said it would be around 2004 levels, but now he is looking at a turnout that would be the highest since 1960.

"It's driven by 90 percent of the American people thinking the country is on the wrong track," Gans said Friday. "The only question is how many Republicans are not going to show up."

We're already hearing about 10 hour waits in Georgia. The argument Hilzoy makes is worth considering, and these huge waits point to a shameful lack of effort in enforcing the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause, since:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

My argument is this: Voting is a basic political liberty for citizens in a republic; the United States is a republic, thus basic liberty includes the right to vote.

That some must spend vastly, ridiculously longer amounts time of time to exercise their basic liberty than others must spend, is at a minimum troublesome. That there are districts that no more than 5% of that time must be spent to exercise the same basic liberty (30 minutes vs. 10 hours) rises to the level of denying a crucial segment of the electorate of equal protection. Additionally, it demonstrates that the affected persons' rights are prioritized as less important than those of persons who are not affected by these ridiculous delays. The state via its agents overseeing the polls thus fails to provide equal protection to all citizens.

Of course, there are lawyers who specialize in this stuff, and they actually bothered to go to law school, and they must think I am all wet. Oh well....there's still more.

At a minimum, these long delays provide yet another example of how economic inequality effaces the lives and voices of those at the bottom of the pecking order.

Time to be the un-Palin and return to the matter at hand, the topic of discussion, the quesiton of the moment--How goes the race?

Bloomberg says Obama holds a 6 point lead in national polls:

Nov. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Barack Obama has an average lead of 6.5 percentage points over John McCain in national polls with three days left in the presidential campaign.

Polls released this week showed the Democratic candidate with leads ranging from three points in a Fox News survey to 11 points in a New York Times/CBS News poll. An average of polls compiled by Real Clear Politics shows that Obama has been ahead between five and eight points since the beginning of October.

We find ourselves watching two campaigns in very different moods and modes. Obama seeks a landslide, campaigning in states Bush won in 2004. McCain seeks an upset, also seeking to portray Obama as far to the left.

The Chicago Sun Times says:

Despite John McCain's prediction of an upset, Barack Obama reached for a landslide Friday, invading his rival's home state with TV ads and building a lead in early voting in key battlegrounds as the presidential race headed into a hectic final weekend.

McCain charged that Obama, bidding to become the first black president, ''began his campaign in the liberal left lane of politics and has never left it. He's more liberal than a senator who calls himself a socialist,'' he added in Hanoverton, Ohio, a reference to Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont.

Yet with the economy almost certainly in a recession and the country clamoring for change after eight years of Republican rule, even some of McCain's allies conceded the obvious.

Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Senator Joe Biden warns that the election will be closer than a lot of people think:

But Biden said he was still worried about winning the election, even as polls show the Democratic ticket ahead in many key states.

"We've been down this road before," he said. "I felt awful good about this time, you know, in the Kerry campaign. And I felt good in the Gore campaign -- and so, so, this, that old joke, you know, it ain't over till it's over. I mean we feel good. We look good, but it's not over yet ... This election's going to be a lot closer than everybody thinks it is."

At the same time, Biden essentially declared the contest for Pennsylvania over, even with both McCain and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin having made numerous appearances there over the last few weeks.

"I think it's going to be close in Florida. It's going to be close here. It's going to be close in Missouri.... I don't think it will be that close in Pennsylvania. I feel very good about Pennsylvania," he said. "Maybe because I know the state so well. Um, I'm not overconfident about it, but I feel real good there."

Speaking of Florida, just like far too much of 2000, it is too close to call and the stakes are huge:

With 48 hours until Election Day and candidates swarming the state like mosquitoes, a new Orlando Sentinel poll suggests that the race for president in Florida remains too close to call.

The poll, by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, shows Sen. Barack Obama leading Sen. John McCain 47 percent to 45 percent, well within the poll's 4-point margin of error. With the race essentially tied going into the last lap, Florida's 27 electoral votes remain the biggest battleground prize for either candidate.

If Obama wins here, he is virtually assured the presidency. If McCain loses, his candidacy is all but dead. Mason Dixon Polling & Research interviewed 625 likely voters Wednesday and Thursday.

Polling across Florida reveals these regional variations:

Obama is cruising in Southeast Florida, a Democratic stronghold loaded with Jewish voters, African-Americans, non-Cuban Hispanics and transplants from the Northeast.

In Central Florida — a nine-county area that includes Orlando — McCain holds a 13- point lead, but in the Tampa Bay area, he and Obama are deadlocked, 46-46.

That five-county region is the most closely watched part of the state. This decade, it has become an effective political barometer, predicting statewide results within 1 or 2 percentage points.

In early October, Obama held a 4-percentage-point lead there. Eleven days ago, McCain was up 3 points. Now, the region is dead even.

I wish they had included data from other areas, including the panhandle and the rest of northern Florida. I assume that northern Florida is really red north of Gainesville. Does anyone have any numbers that either buttress that assertion or crush it like a grape? Let me have those numbers!

For more analysis of Florida's leanings, we turn to Adam C. Smith, political editor of the St. Petersburg Times. What we find is that Mr. Smith has many hands, and he never stops referencing different ones throughout the piece. That said, he comprehensively covers all possible outcomes in parsing the data.

"Some Dead Economicst" thinks that McCain will take Florida in a squeaker, unless... (but that's the other hand, and I only have two, both on the keyboard)