My typical answer when asked who will win the presidential election is, and has long been, that the election it is likely to go right down to the wire and be too close to call! I’ll write more later about what this might imply for which states to watch as we get closer to Election day.

I get my data from a number of sources, but I most closely follow:

Polling trends: Pollster.com.

Prediction markets: Intrade and the Iowa Electronic Markets.

At this moment, the IEM has the presidential contest at .519 and .480 (Democratic party and Republican party presidential election vote shares, respectively); Intrade’s similar markets (the political party presidential election winners) are at 51.2 (Democratic) and 49.9 (Republican). Pollster has the latest national trend at 46.9% (McCain) and 45.4% (Obama). Note that Obama has been ahead of McCain in the Pollster national trend estimate for a long time.

In other words, too close to call based on the current national trends.