I sooooooo like how you think! I've been fantasizing about Montana and W. Virginia...Any thoughts on those?

The Governor of North Carolina, Easly (sp?) was on Rachel Maddow and made a very interesting comment. She asked him if there were concerns that bigotry and prejudices were overstating Obama's true numbers (Bradley effect) and he said that he believed that it was the exact opposite. Listening to people around his state, he believes that while they tell pollsters they are undecided, that they will actually go into the voting booth and pull the lever for Obama because they do understand that the country in going in the wrong direction economically for them. It was interesting.

Excellent. I have thought the same things about Georgia. In the next four weeks I think we should push the map and see if we can make headway in Texas and some of the other 'red' states. It will keep McCain on his toes and if nothing else expand the popular vote to give us a stronger majority win.

how about Bob Barr, georgian 3d party candidate.
he may draw 4-5% of the vote from McShame.
strange this was not mentioned in the article.
go obama, but watch out for dangerous mcShame attacks.

I think Georgia may surprise everyone. I know of a few people who voted in predominantly African American cities and they had to wait 2-3 hours to vote. We are going to have a large African American turnout, add to that the enthusiastic volunteers here and throw Bob Barr into the equation...we could pull this out for Obama. I will be early voting today, my area is more Republican leaning so I will be interested to see what the turnout is here.

There was a similar article Monday at
fivethirtyeight.com.

The point I took away from the article was that while it would be great to win Georgia, if conditions are such that Obama can win there, he'll already have won in Virginia and North Carolin, making Georgia superfluous.

Third party candidate Bob Barr, has "Georgia on my mind"....how come no mention, maybe statistically insignificant, and Barr is marginalized to the sidelines between Obama v McCain....

Maybe Rasmussen is discounting the Obama numbers because they expect vote suppression to be successful. Call it the Rove effect.

Black represent 40% of the newly registered voters. Who are the other 60%??? My guess is at least a pretty good percentage of them are young voters also registered by Obama field workers. If so, and he captures a significant percentage of those voters, that makes it a lot easier to get to that 30% magic number of white voters. Georgia won't decide the election - as others have said, if he wins Georgia, he's already won everywhere else he needs to. But it would be a hell of a thing to win it.

West Virginia, although its closer, is a lot less likely just because the the whole Appalachian thing. I doubt there are many movable votes there. I don't know if there was much registration or GOTV activity there either - anyone know?

I am here in GA and I can tell you that we have a well organized, huge volunteer effort guided by about 50 staffers. We had 350 Organizing fellows here all summer doing voter reg and volunteer organizing and had 135 field organizers for about 6 weeks before 85 got redeployed to other states.

I did some voter reg.last weekend and virtually every African American is registered and excited. I was really surprised at the younger ones who look like rappers and hip hoppers strutting around who you would think wouldn't care and they do..

Atlanta is the mecca for young people in the south so we get a lot of 20 somethings out of school coming here to work as well as a lot of college kids at UGA in Athens, GA Tech, GA Southern, Emory, Morehouse, Agnes Scott just here in Atlanta so the 18-29 reg and new voters is huge as well

Here is a great link on this issue:
http://www.tondeestavern.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=2157

Barr will get a couple points , 3-5 maybe...all out of McCain's hide which would seal it.

My guess is if we are going this way and NC is that SC, which is not being polled much, which has a higher African American population could be in play as well.

GA can happen....lets keep our fingers crossed

Excuse me- but unless ACORN has done it's bit in the Peach State- I think Nov. 4 is next month- and GA will go to McCain-Palin.

Barr will play No part in it.
People will not waste their votes on him.

Georgians value their country- and will not vote for a scary, shallow, inexperienced Marxist.

I hope you're right, articleman. In fact, until this morning's NYT story reminding me of voter supression I'd have bet on it. Between this and our old Diebold machines (our state is one of the few that hasn't made any changes or progress on changing these out) I am still not holding my breath.

I have, however, bought bottle of champagne for Nov. 4th.

A win in Georgia -- or Mississippi -- could NEVER be seen a "superfluous" As a native Southerner who remembers back when the "solid South" meant solidly Democratic (Dixiecratic) and then saw it go solid Republican (conservative Republican), seeing one or more of those states show up blue and know that, for the first time in my life, it was a "progressive" victory ..... I think I'd be crying tears of joy for a week. Keep working, you guys! I'm contacting every one of my relatives and old friends.

One other reason that it may be possible -- up here in the northeast, I am hearing more and more conservative Republicans say that they just don't know if they can make themselves vote for McCain. They talk about maybe, if they can force themselves, voting for Obama; more easily voting for a third party candidate; voting only downticket; or not voting at all. Some, as you might imagine, are moderate Republicans who have become disillusioned about the person they thought was an independent straight-shooter, but a number of these are "the base" (Heard one say that if Palin were at the top of the ticket, they'd vote three times if they could ... Shudder!) The enthusiasm factor, at least for the top of the ticket, is way down. ---- If the same thing is happening with the McCain voters in GA and other parts of the South -- ones that, if asked today, would readily say they are voting for McCain but who may not go to the polls or be able to pull the lever -- then that makes swells the percentage of actual votes of the Independents and Dems, esp young people and blacks.

I'll try to keep this daydream handy to help bring down my blood pressure after listening to the next vile McCain/Palin attack.

My wife's sister and husband live in Atlanta. Both engineers for Lockeed-Martin (white-collar welfare). Lifelong republicans (48 and 58 years old). They are voting for Obama.

Blugrass legend Bill Stamey a West virginia native has indorsed Obama and this shoud help in W.V.,Virginia,and North Carolina.

Plouffe has predicted that 47% can win it given the expected level of support for Barr (who, given the small sample will not show up).

Just one point... wouldn't participating above their percentage share of the electorate imply voter fraud? How could a group possibly participate above their share of the electorate? Unless you meant 'eligible to register', or are referring to their historic rate of participation.