Hal O'Brien

State of play in the election as of today, according to simulators and markets. Comparisons are to my previous roundup, on September 30:

Princeton Election Consortium: Obama 353 electoral votes, McCain 185 (Formerly Obama 313 electoral votes, McCain 225, so Obama +40)

FiveThirtyEight.com: Obama 347 electoral votes, McCain 191 (Formerly Obama 331 electoral votes, McCain 207, so Obama +16)

Electoral-Vote.com: Obama 349 electoral votes, McCain 174, Ties 15 (Formerly Obama 286 electoral votes, McCain 225, Ties 27, so Obama +63)

Iowa Elctronic Markets: Dem .81, Rep .19 (Formerly Dem .69, Rep .31, so Obama +.12) (one way to think of that is as percentages, but it represents the price of contracts out of a $1.00)

Intrade does both:
* Obama 338 electoral votes, McCain 200 (Unchanged!)
* Obama .71, McCain .29 in the contracts (Formerly Obama .64, McCain .36, so Obama +.07)

*^*^*

The second most obvious change (the most obvious being Obama's improvements): The spread between the different analysts has tightened from 52 electoral votes to 15. That implies the news has been so uniformly good for Obama that algorithms are becoming less of a distinguishing factor.

Intrade, by staying unchanged, has gone from being the most optimistic for Obama to the most restrained.