While national polls show that the presidential race is still close, the Electoral College is what counts, and by that measure, Kerry’s ahead by a large margin, as these two sites suggest. However, these two analyses take into account polls that show that several states are very, very close. If those states shift, it will create huge shifts in the electoral vote.

The Electoral College tends to exaggerate a winner’s victory and a loser’s defeat, as you can tell by comparing the popular and electoral votes of past elections. Nevertheless, that’s the vote that counts, not the nationwide popular vote — as we learned in 2000.