A few days before the first Presidential debate seems like a good time to look at the electoral map, which, at least according to the opinion pollsters, is moving in the direction of Obama and the Democrats. In almost all of the competitive states where the election will be decided, recent surveys show Barack Obama widening his lead, moving ahead, or closing on Mitt Romney. With two hundred and seventy votes in the electoral college needed for victory, projections based on recent polling show the President winning at least three hundred votes, and possibly quite a few more.

Karl Rove and other Republican strategists are suggesting that some polling organizations are overestimating the number of Democratic voters, but that argument is largely a red herring. In many swing states, successive polls carried out by the same pollsters, using the same sampling procedure, have showed Obama gaining ground. Even polling organizations that tend to lean Republican have found the same trend.

It is true that in one or two states, such as Colorado and New Hampshire, Obama’s lead is narrow enough that it could be a statistical fluke. And, of course, things could change between now and November 6th, especially if Romney puts up a good show in Denver next Wednesday. But even with these qualifications, the electoral map is worth looking at—if only to convey the scale of the challenge facing Romney and Paul Ryan.

Of the fifty states, twenty-three are generally regarded as sound Republican bets at the Presidential level and sixteen as safe Democratic bets. The safe (or safeish) G.O.P. states are Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming. Together they account for a hundred and ninety-one votes in the electoral college. The safe (or safeish) Democratic states are California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington—plus the District of Columbia. Together they account for two hundred and one electoral votes.

Looking at the latest survey data, it is hard to see any of these states going against type. Some polls show Arizona and Missouri closer than Romney would like, but he is still ahead. In New Mexico, Gary Johnson, the libertarian candidate and former governor, appears to picking up some Democratic support, but Obama is still leading Romney comfortably. G.O.P. hopes that they might mount an effective challenge in Minnesota and Oregon are receding. So I’m sticking with the conventional wisdom and ruling out any shocks in either party’s core areas.

That leaves eleven so-called battleground states, where the two campaigns are spending most of their money: Colorado (9 votes in the electoral college), Florida (29), Iowa (6) Michigan (16), Nevada (6), New Hampshire (4), North Carolina (15), Ohio (18), Pennsylvania (20), Virginia (13), and Wisconsin (10). If you want to play the role of political strategist, the game is go through the various permutations and see if you can come up with another seventy-nine votes for Romney or sixty-nine votes for Obama.

What makes things so much more favorable for the Democrats, and so much harder for the G.O.P., is that in Michigan and Pennsylvania Obama has been leading for many months. According to the Real Clear Politics poll of polls, he is now ahead by eight points in Pennsylvania and almost nine points in Michigan. Barring some sort of catastrophe, I can’t see the President losing either of these states, so I’m going to add them to his column, which takes him to two hundred and thirty-seven electoral votes, needing just another thirty-three for victory.

If Obama wins Florida, he is very close to being there. During the past week, five polls have been taken there, and all of them show Obama ahead. In four of the surveys, his lead is three to five points; in the other, a CBSNews/New York Times/Quinnipiac College survey, the gap is nine points. Given Florida’s history as a state where Presidential elections are often pretty close, the latter poll could well be an outlier. Plus, we all know that Florida is a distinctive place, where funny things can happen in elections. Given the possibility of voter suppression and outright fraud, I still regard it as too close to call. But for Romney, it is very near a must-win state, especially given what is happening in Ohio.

Romney’s three-day bus tour through the Buckeye State, which ended in Toledo, on Wednesday, was an emergency rescue mission. In the past two weeks, six polls taken in the state have shown the G.O.P. candidate trailing by anywhere from one to ten percentage points. Two of the polls were carried out by organizations with ties to the Republicans: Fox News and Purple Strategies. The Real Clear Politics poll of polls shows Obama leading by more than five points.

For some time now, I have thought Obama would win Ohio. The state’s economy is doing well compared to some other parts of the country, and one of the main reasons for that is the auto bailout. (According to some estimates, one out of every eight jobs in the state is tied to the car industry.) The local Democratic party was energized by last year’s successful bid to overturn an anti-union law championed by John Kasich, Ohio’s Republican governor, and in the state’s rural expanses, which lean toward the G.O.P., there are many evangelical Christians who remain suspicious of Romney’s religion. (In the Republican primary, he defeated Rick Santorum by less than a point.) Given the structural difficulties facing Romney, and the recent polling data, I can’t see him turning it around, so I’m giving the state to Obama.

Adding Ohio’s eighteen votes to the Democrat’s tally leaves the electoral college looking like this: Obama two hundred and fifty-five, Romney a hundred and ninety-one. Now you see why the betting markets are making Obama such a hot favorite to win. Assuming he loses Ohio, Romney has to turn around Florida and virtually run the table in the rest of the battleground states. Obama has to pick up just fifteen more electoral votes from among the states on this list: Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, North Carolina, Virginia, and Wisconsin. Let’s look at them in turn.

North Carolina alone, with fifteen votes, could do it, but until recently the state was a G.O.P. bastion, and it remains Romney’s best bet. Obama defeated John McCain there narrowly in 2008, but most political professionals are still expecting it to revert to type. That’s no sure thing, though. Three polls taken in the last week all show Obama leading. In a survey released yesterday from NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist College, he has forty-eight per cent to Romney’s forty-six per cent. However, all of these leads are within the margin of error. Partly because my impressions of North Carolina are still colored by writing about the campaigns of Jesse Helms in the late nineteen-eighties and early nineties, I suspect that Romney will rally and pull out a narrow victory. But if I don’t see a shift in the polls over the next couple of weeks, I reserve the right to change my mind. Still, my provisional call takes Romney up to two hundred and six votes in the electoral college.