Is Early Voting McCain's Death Knell?

Think that McCain has no chance of winning? You might be right. In addition to Obama's leads in a number of formerly red states, he's doing quite well among early voters. The Associated Press released a polls today from most of the key states. They might not be accurate, but if they are then McCain has a huge problem. Not only is Obama ahead in all of the states -- and by pretty large margins in some of them -- but significant numbers of people have voted early in most of them and most of the early voters are going for Obama.

Underrated/Overrated (2008)

With the first BCS poll out yesterday, here are the teams that the computers think are underrated or overrated (with AP rank/computer rank in parentheses)

Overrated
Penn St. (3/7)
best win so far is against Oregon St. -- this will change if they beat OSU on Saturday

USC (6/10)
Somewhat puzzling given that the computers rank OSU #5, but they did lose to the OSU of the west

Florida (5/12)
Lost to Ole Miss + computer doesn't give much credence to LSU victory (or factor in margin of victory)

Texas Tech (8/11)
Downy-soft schedule

LSU (11/19)
No quality wins -- and, no, Auburn doesn't count

S. Florida (14/23)
Beat Kansas, but the computers don't respect Kansas

Kansas (19/unranked)
Quick, name a team they've beaten + a close loss to Okla doesn't matter to the computers


Underrated

Ohio St. (10/5)
After getting routed in the last two title games, nobody wants to see them in another

Oklahoma St. (7/3)
Started off really low

Georgia Tech (21/16)
ditto, plus the computers don't factor in a 3 point win over Gardner-Webb

Utah (12/8)
Boise St. (13/9)
The computers don't differentiate between BCS and non-BCS