Despite all the factors that should make this a Democratic landslide year, despite recent polls showing Obama leading by 3% to 13% (average of 6.3%), despite the electoral vote projections showing that a McCain victory would require him to win every single one of the tossup states and take Pennsylvania away from Obama's persistent, strong lead there -- despite all this we have to remember that it comes down to people actually going to the polls and voting for Obama.
OK. No problem. Obama's ground game, get-out-the-vote organization is going to swamp McCain's. He doesn't have the organization, the volunteers, or the money that Obama does. In addition, 25% of the registered voters already have voted, and Obama has already banked a sizeable majority of those votes.
McCain's campaign manager Davis was on TV this morning; but the best spin he could make is that McCain will win all the tossup states plus PA, that the polls are all wrong, and that the tide is turning toward McCain. But the evidence just isn't there.
It does not suggest an upset in the making when, in the last week, Arizona has been moved into the tossup category, forcing McCain to go home to campaign and use robocalls in his own state, and the leading newspaper in Tucson, the second largest city, has just endorsed Obama.
But my biggest reassurance came watching This Week With George Stephanopolis. Guests were George Will, Mark Halperin, Matthew Dowd, and Donna Brazille. They all agreed that at this late date, the few undecideds in the polls typically either don't vote or else split about even. That's bad news for McCain, because he would need them to break decisively for him.
Predictions of the electoral vote count ranged from 338 to 378 by the panelists. And who was the high 378? George Will, the sober, conservative, cautious one of the lot. What makes those numbers so impressive is that even the lowest prediction, Matthew Dowd's 338, is still 68 more votes than Obama needs to win. That's a whole bunch of the tossup states he doesn't have to win, and it could happen -- and probably will.
Will the fat lady please hurry up and sing? It's hard to keep up an appearance of caution and calm.
Ralph
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Just saw the very encouraging graph that Mickey has at 1boringoldman.com (link to the right) comparing polls leading up to the election in 2000, 2004, and 2008.
I week prior to the election, George Bush was leading by 3+% in 2000 and 2% in 2000.
At the comparable pre-election point, Obama is leading by 6%.
Maybe the fat lady is already singing.
Actually what that graph portrays is the deviation of the pre-election polls from the actual final vote. So what it shows is that Bush's lead narrowed by 2% and 3% in the last week.
If the same narrowing occurs with Obama, he still has a cushion to make it a decisive win.
This is my nightmare scenario. McCain wins, as he should Indiana and Missouri, and I wouldn't be surprised to see him take Pennsylvania and Ohio. If that were to happen, Obama would have to virtually sweep at the other tossup states, including Florida and Virginia.
I hope I'm wrong but I haven't liked any of these polls. They all have screwy samples. Some of the most pro-Obama polls sampled 25% more Democrats. I don't see the point of that. Some had almost equal representation - Democrats, Republicans, Independents. What electorate does that reflect?
I think any state that has an 'undecided' contingent of 6% or more will see those undecideds vote McCain. People know they shouldn't, so they don't want to admit they are going to vote that way. I don't believe anyone is undecided at this point.
Just unwilling to be honest.
The final USA/Gallup poll has just been released. It polled 2,472 likely voters on Fri-Sat-Sun, with these results:
Obama 53% McCain 42%
This 11% lead for Obama is up from 9% on yesterday's Gallup, which had Obama at 52% and McCain at 43%.
The difference isn't statistically different, but it at least refutes the spin that McCain is "surging."
I have always found USA Today polls to be pretty accurate. Not so with Gallup. So I'm not sure what to make of it. Maybe people are secretly breaking for Obama and don't want to admit it?
This election, I have no clue.
I don't think any one poll should be given too much weight. But when you look at averages of the valid polls, as RealClearPolitics and Fivethirtyeight do, and look at trends, then it is all in Obama's favor.
TPM has it's own set of polls that they track and do a weighted average, and they just released their final one: Obama leads by 7.3%. This is consistent with TPM, RCP, and 538.
Even more, they point out that his average in this weighted sample has increased by a small amount each day for the past 4 cycles. To me that's more significant than the number.
The Mascon-Dison poll, which gives Obama some of the lowest leads (even though he still leads even there), weight their polling sample against the 2004 Dem-Rep balance, and thereby over-samples Repubs according to 2008 affiliations. They have consistently given Obama several percentage points lower.
McCain's only source of enough votes at this point is if people are lying to the pollsters, as Richard fears. I just don't think there will be 6% who are doing that.
But I keep thinking I hear the fat lady singing, and then I start worrying again and can't sleep.
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