Flightmare from hell

How can John McCain beat Barack Obama based on the poll of polls 11/1/2008. (Pollster.com)?

So as of today there are 7 states that are toss-up, 4 leaning dem and 2 leaning rep. 

If you take all of these as toss-up and throw in Pennsylvania then you have 14 toss-up states.

Florida 27 Electoral Votes (Poll trend: BO (Dem) 47.7%; JM (Rep) 45.1%)

Pen 21 (BO 51.6%; JM 43.2%)

Ohio 20 (BO 49.6% JM 43.3%)

North Carolina 15

Georgia 15

Virginia 13

Indiana 11

Missouri 11

Arizona 10

Colorado 9

Nevada 5

North Dakota 3

South Dakota 3

Montana 3

Total of 166 toss-up Electoral Votes.

According to the polls there are 129 Solid Republican and 243 Solid Democratic electoral votes among 36 states and DC which has no EVs - just 1 'poll')

So 14 toss ups (assuming each state has a 50% chance) gives 16384 scenarios (2^14)

Of these, 16190 result in a Dem win (98.8%), 169 in a Rep win (1%) and 25 tied (0.2%) scenarios.

So McCain has a 1.2% chance of a win or a tie.

Ties go to a House of Representatives vote, in which case Obama wins.

So we are left with 169 scenarios in which McCain can win.

In every one of these, he has to win Florida.

In all but 5 of them he has to win Ohio.

In all but 4 of the 169 he has to win Pennsylvania.

On average he has to win 11 out of the 14 toss-ups and the 3 he can ignore are ND, SD and MT.

There would have to be a landslide to JMcC among the undecided plus those who would change their minds plus the Bradley effecteds.

Good luck to him.