Here is the latest breakdown of states, ranked by Swing Points with Electoral Votes used as a tiebreaker. As usual, Florida and Ohio are 1-2 in this "Top 10-ish" list:

Some changes since last time:
Colorado, Iowa, and Nevada have each gained 10 points as CNN now considers them to be true swing states.
Both Wisconsin and Michigan have dropped 5 points as Real Clear Politics now puts them both in the "Leaning Democrat" category.

Electoral Votes

If we (like last time) consider states with 55 points or more to be true swing states, and states with 50 or below as solid or leaning for one side or the other, then we currently have the following scenario:

95 Electoral Votes (EV) are up for grabs (Top 8 states in the above list)
237 EV are solid or leaning Democrat (includes Pennsylvania and Michigan in above list)
206 EV are solid or leaning Republican (includes North Carolina in above list)

Based on these numbers:
The Democrats need 33 of the 95 available EV to win.
The Republicans need 64 of the 95 available EV to win.

This is close to the state of things from last time, except that Nevada has gone from Leaning Democrat to being considered a true swing state in coming up with these numbers.

As a follow up on what I have posted above, it is reasonable to ask how many of those swing votes each candidate needs in order to get to 270 electoral votes, the minimum required to win the election.

From the sources I listed, it is pretty well accepted that the top 7 states in the list are undecided, while all remaining states are either leaning toward one of the candidates or are pretty solidly in favor of one of the candidates. Oddly, Fox News has Georgia, Kentucky, and Tennessee leaning Republican, but I think it is safe to put them in the solidly Republican group.

With that in mind, we have the following scenario:
89 Electoral Votes (EV) are up for grabs (Top 7 states in list above)
243 EV favor the Democrats (179 solid, 64 leaning)
206 EV favor the Republicans (159 solid, 47 leaning)

Based on those numbers:
The Democrats need 27 of the 89 available EV to win.
The Republicans need 64 of the 89 available EV to win.

In short, the Republicans can only lose 25 EV among the top 7 undecided states, and therefore must win Florida -- unless they win over some states in the leaning-Democrat category. Their best bets there lie in Pennsylvania (20 EV) and Michigan (16 EV).

The Democrats need just 27 more EV (Florida alone would accomplish this), assuming they do not lose any of the states currently leaning Democrat. Their best chance at winning a big leaning-Republican state would appear to be in North Carolina, with its 15 EV.

Obviously the mix of states that are up for grabs or simply leaning one way can change over the next 7 weeks. I will try to update things, as time permits me.

A small percentage of members may not be able to see the nabla if you use the copy-and-paste method. Instead, you can use LaTeX by typing [itex]\nabla f(x)[/itex] to get [itex]\nabla f(x)[/itex]

You're welcome!

PF member Kurdt had mentioned (about 3 years ago) that he couldn't see some of the symbols. There might have been 1 or 2 other members who noted having the same problem. At the time, what they could or could not see was consistent with the Notepad test.

Kurdt was using Windows XP, as was I at the time, so we don't think it was an OS issue. I'm not sure what browser Kurdt was using; I was (and still am) using Firefox.

There is no rule against using the "not viewable" characters in your posts, just the caveat that there are (or were) a minority of people out there who would not be able to view them.

I have updated the Dow 5-year graph.

This is weird. My test for "viewable to everybody" was that I could include the character in a text file, and that it was visible in Notepad. "·" and "⋅" are actually different characters -- seeing the distinction might depend on what font you use to view them. One was viewable in Notepad, one was not, and so they got put into different categories of "viewableness". Same for ~ and ∼.

However, when I checked the characters again just now, all are now visible in Notepad. All the characters I listed as "Not viewable" are visible in Notepad. I don't know what this means in terms of other people being able to see them however. It was definitely true, about 3 years ago, that at least 1 person could not see the "Not viewable" characters in their browser.

I have upgraded my OS from Windows XP to Windows 7 in the intervening time, I wonder if that has something to do with it.

At any rate, since our upgrade to MathJax, it is easy enough to use LaTeX for symbols if there's any doubt about viewability.

Agreed. This is just meant to make comparisons among the three historic market crashes, not to predict the future of the market. That would be folly.

Since the Dow is commonly used as an indicator of market health, that was the metric I chose. All we can say, when we compare the graphs, is that the crash of 2008 was/was not as severe as the ones in 1929 or 1987, using this particular metric.

The correlation is pretty eerie in the Nasdaq2000 vs. DJI1929