Obama's Electoral Map: Expanding Blue

Daily Kos Electoral Scoreboard

Doesn't it look pretty? Gotta love that New Mexico - Colorado span! Note that North Carolina has just been added to the Blue part of the map. With only a few provisional ballots left to count, Obama leads in NC by a sliver of a margin -- 49.9% to 49.5%. Obama leads McCain by 14,053 votes out of about 4.3 million cast. This gives Obama a whopping 364 Electoral Votes to McCain's paltry 163. Bush won NC by 12% in 2004.

We're still waiting on Missouri and its 11 Electoral Votes. McCain will probably take the state as he's leading by 5,868 votes with only about 7,000 provisional ballots left to count. That would break the long run of MO as a bellwether state in presidential elections. Since 1904, Mo has sided with the winner every time but once, when the state went for Adlai Stevenson over the victorious Dwight Eisenhower in 1956. By the way, New Mexico has also served as an accurate presidential bellwether -- siding with the losing candidate only twice since 1912. That was in 1976 and 2000.

If you go to the larger map at Kos, you can switch to the years 2000 or 2004 and see how much it's changed, in our favor. You can also see similar maps for U.S. Senate and House races.