It's gonna' be close

Obama wins
even while McCain
takes the battleground states

The map above comes from Electoral Vote. It's an interactive website that tracks the daily changes in the electoral college vote-spread between McCain and Obama. Each day it uses an algorithmic aggregation of national and state voter polls to create the map. The states are then designated as Strong, Weak, or Barely Democrat or as Strong, Weak, or Barely Republican. As with North Caroline, states can also be designated as Exactly Tied. So if the election were held on 8 October 2008 Obama would win with 274 electoral votes to McCain's 174.

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The Washington Post posts a similar map called Pick Your President. Rather than estimating the daily vote-spread, it allows you to do so; which I've done above. Using the Electoral Vote map, I gave the Strong and Weak states to the respective candidates. Then I gave the Barely and Tied states to McCain. The predicted outcome still favors Obama but is much closer with his 277 electoral votes to McCain's 261. That's one reason why I believe that the Obama campaign is working in more states than McCain. They want to win by as large a margin as possible. This would lessen the risk of the situation that Gore faced with Bush in 2000. A small margin would raise the specter of a another Supreme Court resolution of a presidential election.