The Vodkapundit got me started on the EC-wargaming thing. Back on October 13 I did a little twiddling of my own, with the results here.
The logic behind it is fairly simple; instead of just following the polls, I folded in the recorded actual vote listed for 2000 and 2004, as well as the trend (say, Bush +6.3, Bush +12.9, or Bush +1.4, Kerry + 0.9). Quite a few of the poll results don't match up well with actual voting patterns.
For example, I tagged New Mexico as "leaning McCain" since the votes were Gore +0.1 (2000), Bush +0.7 (2004). A slight, but reddish lean. Florida went Bush +0.1 (2000) to Bush +5.0 (2004), but I only flagged it as leaning, not solid. Just to be safe.
Here in Ohio we went Bush both times, but he dropped from +3.5 to +2.1. I suspect a lot of that was due to the terrible GOP Taft administration. On the other hand I doubt that Obama will do well in Ohio after his "bitter clingers" and Joe the plumber remarks. Hillary pretty much cleaned his clock here during the primaries, and would have presented a much stronger challenge to McCain.
And, yes, I have Colorado leaning red, because that state went for Bush, with diminishing results (+8.4, +4.7). Colorado may end up a very tight race, but I doubt they'll go +5.5 Obama as RCP is predicting. Again, if Hillary were running, it would be a different story.
Stephen has Montana as undecided, when it went +25, +20 for Bush. Indiana is also shown as "undecided," but it went for Bush +15.7, +20.7 the last two elections.
You'll notice there are no "toss up" states on my map, because this is supposed to be a prediction. At the end of the day, each state will have voted for Obama, or McCain. Period. No "toss up" EC votes will exist. So I removed those from my map and committed them to a candidate, usually only as leaning unless the historical vote indicated otherwise (such as Montana, above).
Feel free to check out the map, but note the recorded votes for each state. Also note that my map gives Obama 204 "solid" votes with only 60 "leaning," while McCain has only 140 "solid" with 134 "leaning." Still, I'm fairly confident about a healthy number of those leans.
Doing a little checking, and I see that my map runs very close to the actual 2004 election, except that Obama picks up two states: New Mexico and Iowa.