Handicapping the 2012 Election

It's a long way to 2012, but Nate Silver is doing some early number-crunching:

Where would Barack Obama be re-elected if an election were held today?

We can't know for sure, and it would depend on many contingencies, such as the identity of his Republican opponent. One quick-and-dirty way to assess this question, however, is to look at those states where Obama's approval rating is 50 percent or higher. Based on a compilation of public polls since February 15th, that appears to be the case in the following states:



Full analysis at the link.