Which State Will Tip It for Obama?

(Correction at bottom)

With most signs pointing to an Obama victory, let's see which state is most likely to put the Democratic presidential nominee over the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch.

The following table lists the states where Obama has an edge over McCain, as per Intrade this morning at 9:30 a.m. EST. States are ordered by poll closing times. Blue states are those in which Obama has greater than an 80 percent chance of winning while red states are those where his chances are between 50 percent and 80 percent.

In the "worst-case" where Obama loses all of the red states, then California -- where polls close at 11 p.m. EST -- will put him over.

In the more optimistic scenario where Obama wins Florida, Missouri, and North Carolina, then either Iowa or New Jersey will be the deciders, depending on which state's results come through first.

Other scenarios:

- Lose Florida, win Missouri and North Carolina: either California, Washington or Hawaii and Oregon combined will put him above 270

- Lose Florida and Missouri, win North Carolina: California or Hawaii, Washington, Oregon combined

- Lose Florida and North Carolina: California

- Lose Missouri and North Carolina, win Florida: California, or Washington, or Hawaii and Oregon combined

- Lose Missouri win Florida and North Carolina: Iowa and New Jersey combined

- Lose NC win Missouri and Florida: Iowa and New Jersey combined

The most likely scenario? I give a slight edge to New Jersey in being the decider over Iowa.

Of course, this is all assuming that the networks don't call the race early or that there aren't any counting hold-ups, both of which may be very big assumptions.

UPDATE

Carl Bialik finds a number cruncher who has studied how long it took networks to project winners in 2004 and who says that this year Hawaii will have the distinction of puttig Obama over 270, sometime right after 11 p.m. 

UPDATE 2 (9:27 p.m. EST)

My apologies, I made a sorting error in putting together the poll closing information, meaning that the table above has errors in it for states starting with 'N', which I should have noticed: Nevada 8 p.m. EST close ???

Here are the corrections:

- New Mexico closed at 9 p.m. not 8 p.m., New Jersey closed at 8 p.m. not 10. p.m., Nevada closes at 10 p.m. not 8 p.m., New Hampshire closed at 8 p.m. not 9 p.m., North Carolina closed at 8:30 p.m. not 9 p.m.

What that means for the tipping point is that the best case scenario happens with either the Iowa or Nevada closing at 10 p.m. but the latest numbers have Obama behind in Missouri and its 8 electoral votes, leaving him with 269 if he wins all of the other states he's expected to win in before 11 p.m.

The worst case scenario stays the same with California the likely bet to put Obama over the top.