Posted by Jed Lewison on Fri Nov 21, 2008 at 11:36 AM Pacific

Obama Won 197 Of 196 Battleground EVs

Here's a look electoral votes up from grabs in battleground states, per the Washington Post's Dan Balz and Alec Macgillis on June 8, 2008:

GOP Leaning: 174
Dem Leaning: 168
Battlegrounds: 196

Now, let's look at the final electoral vote tally, including the change from what WaPo had put in each candidate's non-battleground column:

McCain: 173 (-1)
Obama: 365 (+197)

In other words, Obama won 197 of the 196 electoral votes that were up for grabs in battleground states. That's over 100%! Yay Obama!

Except we've got a problem here. You can't win more than 100% in this particular game...can you? Moreover, we know that McCain did eke out a victory in one of the battleground states -- Missouri.

So what gives?

If Obama didn't win more than 100% of the battleground states, then how did he manage to grow his electoral vote total by 197? Let's take a look:

GOP Leaning: Obama won 12 of the 174 EVs, taking IN and NE-02
Dem Leaning: Obama won 168 of the 168 EVs, a clean sweep
Battlegrounds: Obama won 185 of the 196 Evs, losing only MO

So basically, the WaPo's analysis was spot-on...except Obama managed to win 7% of the EVs that they put in McCain's column, and he won 94% of the EVs that were supposedly in battleground states.

Indeed, in the so-called battleground states, Obama won 53% of the vote to McCain's 45% -- a slightly wider margin than the 52% to 46% spread Obama enjoyed in the rest of the country. That's right -- Obama's margin of victory in battleground states was larger than it was in non-battlegrounds.

Perhaps they could have avoided publishing such an embarrassing map if they had taken into account that even though the horserace numbers were close at this point, Democrats had a huge advantage in mobilization and intensity and were unlikely to lose any state that they had won in the four previous elections.

Six states on this battleground list had voted Democratic in the previous four elections -- MI, MN, NJ, OR, PA, and WI. Obama won those states by a combined 56%-43% margin, all by double-digits. If the WaPo had excluded these six states, here's what their electoral vote estimates would have looked like:

GOP Leaning: 174
Dem Leaning: 248
Battlegrounds: 116

This list of battlegrounds would have been far more reasonable, even without Indiana. But unlike the chart that was actually published, this table would have made it clear that Obama was in charge of the campaign

Showing Obama's big advantage might not have been Fair & Balanced™, but so what? The point of reporting isn't to be Fair & Balanced™. The point of reporting is to accurately present the truth. And that makes Nate Silver one of the best political reporters out there.

And he's just getting started.