Interesting.  If the Tarrance Group projection holds up, we could have the scenario where Barack Obama wins the popular vote and John McCain wins the Electoral College — the second time in three elections where that may be true.  Tarrance sees the breakout as follows, once they allocate the undecideds:

Obama: 50.2%

McCain: 48.3%

Given the enormous popular-vote leads Obama will get in California, New York, Illinois, and other second-tier states, that leaves a lot of play in states like Virginia, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and others.  It assumes undecideds will break sharply to McCain — and the undecideds are a significantly higher percentage in these states than in others.

Jim Geraghty notes:

This is very interesting, considering the generally pro-Obama bump in most of the final polls. … I think the McCain folks would prefer that to most of the other projections. It would mean that my projection from last night overestimated Obama.

Will that be ugly?  You bet.  We’ll see if we have another 2000 ahead of us.

Update: Second time in three elections, not years. Sorry about that.