Highs and Lows of the Campaign

Here are some charts that I found on www.electoral-vote.com, which show the highs and lows of the campaign, starting from May 2008. The charts include key events from May up until now- when Obama became the nominee, when Obama traveled abroad, when the Rick Warren interview took place, and when the DNC and RNC started.

Electoral College Graphs 2008

The graph above shows the current number of electoral votes for each candidate since Mar 22, The brown horizontal line shows the 270 electoral vote mark needed to be elected president. The gray vertical lines show the boundaries between the months.



The graph above shows the electoral votes again but omits the "barely" states. The electoral votes of a state only count in this graph if the candidate has a margin of 5% or more over his opponent.

These two maps are important to see, as they show us when the candidates were at their strongest, weakest, and how they are doing now. Overall, we can obiously see McCain's lag in the chart from mid-may through mid-august, as he had less electoral votes than Obama during these months. However,we can also see how John McCain has gained some momentum since the RNC. One rather surprising thing on this chart is that Obama's electoral votes increased during/after the RNC, then drastically decreased again during the month of September. McCain's electoral votes on the other hand decreased during the RNC itself, and increased during the month of September.

One thing that I noticed about this chart is that when one candidate is at his strongest, the other is at his weakest, so there is almost a mirror image shown in this chart. For instance, Obama's strongest point is when he traveled abroad, and this was equally McCain's worst point.

Source of charts: http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2008/Pres/ec_graph-2008.html