Real Clear Politics has an article about changes in party registration since the 2004 election. The Democrats have gained 700,000 people and the Republicans have lost 1 million in the 29 states that register voters by party. Here are the numbers im some important states (rounded to the nearest thousand).

Two states stand out: Iowa and Nevada. In Iowa, Bush won by 10,000 votes and the Democrats have netted 95,000 new voters. In Nevada, Bush won by 22,000 votes and the Democrats have picked up 60,000 new voters. These numbers alone suggest that the Democrats have a good shot at picking up Iowa (7 electoral votes) and Nevada (5 electoral votes). If Obama gets these plus the Kerry states, he has 264 electoral votes, 6 shy of the 270 he needs. If McCain holds all the Bush states except Iowa and Nevada, he wins, but he can't afford to lose another swing state. If he loses New Mexico, too, the electoral college will be tied at 269-269 and the new House picks the President, with each state having one vote.

On a single day, June 30, Barack Obama raised $25 million, more than John McCain raised in all of June ($22 million). But what is more interesting is how they are spending the money. McCain bought $16 million worth of ads in June compared to $5 million for Obama according to a story in Politico. Instead, Obama is spending his money to hire people to run his ground operation, which is going to try to register an additional 10 million new voters, especially poor people and young people, who are expected to vote Democratic.

That Democrats are more enthusiastic about their nominee than Republicans is well documented. Here is another data point. The Nevada Republican Party canceled its state convention for lack of interest. A quorum is 675 and only 300 people signed up. The delegates to the national convention will be chosen in a conference call.

Some new evidence of possible election tampering with Diebold machines has now come to light. What has been clear to computer security professionals for years is now beginning to dawn on politicians: electronic voting machines are only acceptable if they produce paper ballots that voters can verify, deposit in a ballot box, and be used for recounts if need be. The Website verifiedvoting.org keeps track of which states require paper trails and manual audites and which don't. Currently 18 states have laws requiring paper trails and audits and another 13 require paper trails but no audits.

Political scientist Alan Abramowitz has looked at the polling data and concluded that Barack Obama is not going to win a majority of white voters. But he also notes that neither did John Kerry, Al Gore, Bill Clinton, or Jimmy Carter. In fact, the last Democrat to win a majority of the white voters was Lyndon Johnson in 1964. But with white voters making up 80% of the electorate and Obama running only 9% behind John McCain in this group (better than Gore), he can still win the presidency decisively if he wins 95% of the black vote and 2/3 of the Latino vote, which polls indicate he can do.

Swing State Project has a summary of second quarter Senate fundraising. Here are the data for the races already reporting. The second quarter and cash-on-hand numbers are in thousands of dollars.

Three presidential polls today. In Virginia, Obama and McCain are tied at 44% each. This is going to be a squeaker. In Maine, Obama has a solid 46% to 36% lead. Maine, like Nebraska, splits its electoral votes by congressional district, but there is little chance that Maine will split and only slightly more chance that Nebraska will. Alaska is safe for McCain.

We have three states that are exact ties now (Missouri, North Dakota, and Virgina), but also seven more that are "barely" one way or the other. Anything with a white center on the map is a statistical tie. What is noticeable, however, is that Obama's lead in the strong+weak category is 246 electoral votes to 181, quite a substantial base for Obama to build on. He needs only 24 of the 111 up for grabs.

In the Senate we have polls for three competitive races. The closest one is Alaska, where Anchorage mayor Mark Begich (D) is trying to to unseat Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK), who has been in the Senate since Methuselah was in short pants. It's very close. This year normally cold Alaska is very hot. In Maine, Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) is holding her own against Rep. Tom Allen (D), who already represents half the state in the House. He now has to somehow convince the other half.

A poll in the open seat in VA-11 taken by Lake Research puts Gerry Connolly (D) ahead of Keith Fimian (R) by 52% to 21%. Lake Research is a Democratic firm so this number won't go in our data base because the partisan companies like Lake and Strategic Vision (R) can't be trusted but even these guys wouldn't make up a 30-point gap. Probably the Democrats are going to pick up this seat from which Tom Davis (R) is retiring. The demographics of the district, hard by D.C. and covering Prince William and Fairfax counties, has changed over the years and become much more Democraticm basically changing Virginia from a Southern state to a Middle Atlantic state.

Another partisan poll by Public Opinion Strategies (R) in WI-08 puts incumbent Rep. Steve Kagen (D) ahead of challenger John Gard (R) 46% to 42%. When a partisan firm says its candidate is behind, it is usually true. It's when the firm reports its candidate winning that the alarms should go off. Like the Lake report, this one also does not go in the data base.

A poll by Research 2000 (which is nonpartisan) puts Ethan Berkowitz ahead of Rep. Don Young (R-AK) 50% to 40%, but Young first has to get past a tough primary challenge from Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell before he can face Berkowitz.

The Democrats are going to win big in the House this year. There are 35 districts in which the Republican who won a seat in 2006 is not running in 2008 vs. only 11 where the 2006 Democratic winner is not running. Combine this with the DCCC's 7-to-1 fundraising advantage and you begin to see the magnitude of the GOP's problem. In 2006, not a single Democratic incumbent was defeated in the general election. However, victory often sows the seeds of the winner's destruction. The Democrats now hold a number of seats in what is basically hostile territory and the Republicans will try mightily to reclaim them. CQ politics has a story on the Republicans' top five chances. All five of these are on the Hot House races page (along with 52 other competitive races). Here is the low-down on these five.

NY-13 is the congressional district that keeps on giving. Between a drunken congressman with two families, a GOP candidate whose son wanted to run against him so he wouldn't be elected, and the Republicans filing a dead man as their candidate, what else could happen in this Staten Island-based district? Well, the Republicans, or more accurately, some of them, have found a candidate in former assemblyman Robert Straniere. Except the district's most prominent Republican politician, former representative Guy Molinari, called him a liar and said: "I'm going to do everything in my power to stop him." Such words are not likely to be helpful. It is hard to imagine this district staying Republican when one of the most respected Republicans in New York State is violently opposed to the candidate.

Swing State Project has compiled the fundraising reports for House candidates who have filed their second quarter reports already. Here are the data as a .csv file.