John McCain's negative advertising has backfired. Internal tracking polls show that his, not Obama's, unfavorable ratings have gone up and now exceed 50%.
Further, the few remaining undecideds are not the kind of voters who tend to be swayed by negative ads. In fact, they react negatively to negativity. And yet, McCain and Palin continue on that same track. Let's hope they don't catch on.
McCain announced today that "I'm going to whip his you-know-what Wednesday night." Yea, that's about the right tone, Johnny Mc. Schoolyard bully taunts. I prefer my presidents with a little dignity and intelligence, especially in such a grave crisis as we face.
He's also trumpeting that he will release, maybe at the debate, his new plan to save the economy. So far, all his plans have fallen like duds, and have generally been poorly received even by his own party.
RealClearPolitics breaks down the electoral vote (as of today's standing): Obama 277, McCain 158, Toss-up 103. Even if McCain wins every one of those toss-up states (FL, OH, NC, MO, IN, CO, WV, NV) he still doesn't get the magic number of 270. And of those Obama has a good lead in FL, OH, NC, CO, and NV; IN and MO are tied; and McCain has a lead only in WV.
Nate Silver, the genius with the statistics at FiveThirtyEight.com, calculates the electoral vote, if held today, at 350.5 to 187.5 (he allocates the toss-ups).
Nate has made a statistical prediction, based on the historical accuracy of the Gallup poll at this point in the campaign. Obama has held at least a 7 point Gallup lead consistently for 2 weeks. Since Gallup began presidential polling in 1936, only one candidate has overcome a deficit that large, and this late, to win the White House: Ronald Reagan in 1980.
Somehow he calculates this into the prediction that Obama has a 94.1% chance of winning the electoral votes and becoming the next President of the United States.
Even with all this good news, it feels very risky to actually begin to expect that we will win. My head says we will, maybe even a landslide. But my gut clutches up: remember hanging chads, butterfly ballots, voter suppression, voter intimidation, last minute SwiftBoat vicious lies.
Ralph
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An ABC/WaPost poll released this morning has Obama 53%, McCain 43%.
Even more striking are the breakdowns on issues:
Obama leads by 14% on leadership, by 29% on handling the economy, by 11% on tax policy; and on who is more in tune with their beliefs Obama leads by more than 2:1.
And today McCain made the ludicrous statement to his crowd, "We've got 22 days to go, we're down by 6%, and we've got them right where we want them."
One more from that ABC/WaPo poll:
By a slight margin, 48 to 45, voters now trust Obama more than McCain to handle an "unexpected major crisis."
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