For what they're worth, the polls have favored Obama for the past month and seem to be edging up even more for him here at the end, with several now giving him double digits, and the best of the weighted average tracking polls showing him up by about 7.0% with incremental daily trends toward him.
There are not enough uncommitted voters at this point to make the difference. The only nightmare is, as Richard keeps reminding us, whether people are lying to pollsters and how much effect Republican dirty tricks (voter intimidation, voter challenges, and machine tampering) will have.
The other huge factor now is the get-out-the-vote organization. This is the unrecognized secret weapon that has been operating for weeks and will be totally unleashed now. My favorite numbers cruncher, Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight, has also had a colleague, Sean Quinn, who has travelled the states with a photographer visiting some 50 cities to look at the Obama and McCain campaign offices around the country.
For the full story, go to http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/10/big-empty.html
Typical of what they found is that the McCain offices were sparsely occupied by one or two volunteers, sometimes making calls, sometimes chatting, and that their offices would close at 5pm and remain closed on weekends. In contrast, the Obama offices would be bustling with dozens of staff and volunteers open all hours, and full of "explosive energy."
I can add from personal experience here in Atlanta that I get sometimes half a dozen emails a day from various local Obama volunteers, inviting me to parties to help make phone calls or to other volunteer activities, rallies, get-out-the-vote drives, etc.
Quinn has been reporting on this tour incrementally, but now he has a summarizing article at the above link. His conclusion is:
These ground campaigns do not bear any relationship to one another. One side has something in the neighborhood of five million volunteers all assigned to very clear and specific pieces of the operation, and the other seems to have something like a thousand volunteers scattered throughout the country. Jon Tester's 2006 Senate race in Montana had more volunteers -- by a mile -- than John McCain's 2006 presidential campaign.
The Democratic establishment scoffed at Howard Dean's plan to organize in all 50 states. The scoffing stopped with Hillary's defeat, largely by Obama's strategy of running in every state. Then McCain and Palin sneered at Obama's community organizer work. But this 50-state strategy and this organizing the electorate like a community may well prove to be what turns a good lead into a landslide election and a mandate to change our government down to its roots.
McCain and Palin are about to find out what community organizing is all about.
Ralph
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On thing about the McPalin jokes about 'community organization' is that it betrays that they don't know what it means. They've fallen into the Rovian 'community divider' role so seamlessly that I doubt that they even realize that there's an alternative. Obama has made his tax plan pretty clear, so when either McCain or Palin says "Obama will raise your taxes," it's pretty obvious who "your" refers to. When they say that he's a socialist, they don't recognize that the majority right now says, "fine." When they assault Obama's medical insurance plan, the voters recall what having such a plan was like fifteen years ago. And the Joe the Plumber ploy actually comes off as "talking down to." McCain doesn't seem to know that the audience has changed - same people, different priorities. We came together for Bush after 9/11. We're coming together for Obama after the Market's collapse - a community, needing to get organized...
You're right, Mickey. What the Robopublicans don't get is that a majority of the electorate is now on to their tricks. So the dirty stuff doesn't stick any more, at least not with enough voters.
The energy of this campaign really is inspired by hope. We're mad as hell and we have realized we don't have to take it anymore.
Sooner or later a politics of lies and manipulation will falter, and then people will rise up and throw you out.
Ralph
A nice "cherry on the top" extra came in the form of an endorsement of Obama by Dick Cheney's hometown newspaper, the Casper, Wyoming Star-Tribune.
Along with the endorsement of Alaska's largest newpaper, these two have great symbolic value, even though they're not likely to turn Wyoming and Alaska blue.
I fogot to add that Tucson, Arizona's paper also endorsed Obama.
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