9 Counties

There are now just 6 counties for which there are not yet any numbers in North Carolina. Here is how they voted in 2004.

-Buncombe (Tie)
-Chatham (Tie)
-Wilson (Bush +8)
-Franklin (Bush +11)
-Vance (Kerry +12)
-Warren (Kerry +30)

Guessing Obama will pick up roughly 10 points in each of these counties relative to John Kerry, we think Obama will win Buncombe by at least 10 points, picking up 10-12,000 votes there. We think he'll win Chatham by a similar margin, picking up about 3,000 votes there. We think Wilson will basically be a tie. We think Franklin may be a slight McCain advantage, worth 1,000 votes. We expect Vance and Warren to be heavily Obama worth about 4,000 votes.

Thus we expect Senator Obama overall to pick up about 15,000 votes in those counties. With his current 10k deficit that would put him in the lead, but again, we don't know what parts of those nine counties that have partially reported are still outstanding and what their predisposition will be.