With fingers crossed and realizing the race is far from over, it's great to see that Electoral-vote.com shows Obama with a huge 364-171-3 lead in the Electoral College. Meanwhile, FiveThirtyEight.com shows a similar lead for Obama at 345-193.

To help put these numbers in perspective, please view the following two charts:





The top chart shows Obama/McCain, the bottom shows Bush/Kerry. Like McCain this year, Bush enjoyed a post-convention bounce in the polls, with Kerry having to make up ground in that regard from about late September until the election. Kerry was able to close the gap and actually pull ahead of Bush late, but to no avail.

Compare the McCain/Obama chart to the Bush/Kerry chart. Not even close. Obama gave up some of his lead around the GOP convention, allowing McCain to draw about even at one point, but has since re-expanded his lead in dramatic fashion. Obama's cushion over McCain now easily surpasses his prior high set in June when he was in Europe.

I know about the racism concerns, the voter suppression efforts, the robo-calling, the potential for a late "October Surprise," but if Obama were to lose this election due to some odd, Ohio-like strange happenings then we will have witnessed the hat trick, three consecutive presidential elections that involved shady results. The polling numbers as we see them today has to translate into a resounding Electoral College victory for Obama. Assuming these numbers hold up, all the nefarious chicanery they can muster should not change this expected outcome. If it were to somehow, someway succeed, then the citizens of this country better rise up and demand recounts on a massive scale. As Obama said in Denver, enough!