I'm not going to be able to do today's update justice, but let's touch upon a couple of themes quickly:
Firstly,
Obama has been polling a couple of points ahead of our trendline for
the past couple days. That could be noise, or it could be a sign that
the race is turning a bit. Our model inherently behaves conservatively,
and assumes the former until "proven" otherwise.
Secondly,
Obama obviously got a very good number in Virginia today. That is not
enough to turn the state into a toss-up all by itself; we still have
Virginia as lean McCain. However, Virginia may well be a better path to
270 electoral votes for Obama than Ohio, where he got a not-so-good
number from Suffolk.
Thirdly, someone polled Delaware! Our model
(which knew nothing about Joe Biden) had previously seen Delaware as
being about a 7-point race, so a +12 for Obama there suggests about a
5-point Biden bump. That's actually not bad as far as a VP candidate
goes, but nothing compared to Sarah Palin.
--Nate Silver