Newsweek, this week:
On Nov. 4, Barack Obama will be elected as the next president of the United States. The real excitement won’t come from watching that foregone conclusion come to pass. No, the big question is, will Democrats nationwide simply “win” the night—or will they deliver an electoral drubbing so thorough that it signals the utter rejection of conservative ideology and kills the notion that America is a “center-right” country?
Seems like Newsweek might be rooting a little bit rather than covering.
But here’s the thing, Zogby’s polling numbers have the difference between Obama and McCain at four while just last week the spread was twelve. The Investor’s Business Daily poll has Obama up just two. Battleground has Obama up three. Rasmussen had it eight on Sunday but by Monday McCain had gained three. There has been a momentun shift here. The gap is narrowing.
I’m not saying it’ll be easy. I’m just saying that this is far from over.
The pollsters are still, I believe, overestimating Democratic turnout. Sarah Palin is amassing record crowds wherever she goes. John McCain finally has a message and he’s sticking to it and he’s putting money behind it with the “spreading the wealth” and Joe the Plumber. Some 527’s are finally stepping out from behind the trees for McCain including the Born Alive Truth folks.
And here’s something hardly anybody’s talking about. About 8-10 percent of the electorate is still telling pollsters they’re undecided. Well, that means that despite seeing three times more commercials for Obama, the media telling them that the election is already over, and viewing exclusively positive news stories about “The One,” there’s a group of people who have resisted jumping on the Obamessiah bandwagon. Why?
If I’m Obama, that makes me very nervous.
Something tells me that many of these “undecideds” are going to break McCain come game day, just as they did for Hillary in the primaries. In short, don’t give up hope. Too much is at stake this election day. Turnout is everything. If Florida in 2000 taught us anything, it’s that one vote really does count.
October 28, 2008 at 6:48 pm
A lot of dems I’ve heard from actually aren’t confident that Obama will win. Despite all of the evidence they are still scared.
I think both ways are scary personally. Yes there is the possibility of a more Liberal Supreme Court, but I’m also scared of how the world views us. So there is abortion on one hand, and our world reputation being further damaged on the other hand! Plus I don’t have health insurance because I can’t afford it so it would be nice if McCain had a plan more similar to Obamas. It’s too bad we can’t have all of the good qualities in one president! I’m thinking of staying home.
October 28, 2008 at 7:32 pm
Keep in mind that voting for Obama is the politically correct choice in many parts of the country. There may very well be a lot of people saying that they support Obama on the phone or on the street but when they actually go to vote in secret they may do differently.
Also polls often have to make certain assumptions about how people will vote. Three wild cards are in play with this race.
The first is how women will vote with a woman on the Republican ticket. Again, some will feel a lot of pressure to say one thing but they may very much want to support the woman who could possibly be the first woman president in say 4 or 8 years.
The second wild is die-hard Hillary supporters. Hillary’s best shot is against McCain in 4 year, especially after a bad economy. It has the potential to turn out just like her husbands run against Bush the Elder. “Its all about the economy stupid” or, at least that’s what they think. Further, the Republicans will have held the presidency for 12 years at that point. In any event, if you want to see Hillary as president, your best strategic move is to vote for McCain. I don’t, however, think there are a lot of these folks, most people don’t think that far ahead.
The third wild card is the Hispanic vote. This demographic is predominately Democrat but they are not lock for the democrats this time though. McCain has long been a supporter of immigration reform and that has given him a lot of credibility with this group. Also, with the Bishop’s pushing hard on the life issue, a certain amount of the Hispanic Catholic community is going to listen and do the right thing. And in a lot of regards the Hispanic Catholic parishes are often more traditional then a lot of other parishes. Finally, and this is something that is almost never mentioned in polite circles, and I hesitate to mention it here. Many, certainly not all, but many Hispanics don’t get along with blacks. The reasons are complex and certainly controversial but it is not uncommon and the numbers significant enough to skew polling results. All a person needs to tell a pollster is “I am democrat, I have always supported the democrat” and leave it at that.
You may also want to check out one of Ann Coulter’s recent article concerning polling skew consistently leaning to the democrat over the last 40 years.
http://www.anncoulter.com/cgi-local/article.cgi?article=278
The normal rules and conventional wisdom doesn’t apply very well to this election cycle. The stage is set for a huge upset
Don’t believe the media, McCain is actually winning and at this point is starting to pull ahead.
And honestly, I think the media is not only trying to encourage the democrats and demoralize the republicans but I think they are also setting us up for a legal battle if they don’t get the guy they want. A lot of people will be saying: “of course they cheated, after all, everyone said Obama was winning!”
October 29, 2008 at 1:30 pm
If Florida in 2000 taught us anything, it’s that one vote really does count.
Err, yeah, if that vote happens to be in the Supreme Court of the United States. In terms of probabilities, it is much more likely that there are errors in counting votes than a single vote actually being the difference. That is the problem with democracy on a large scale – it is nearly impossible to accurately record votes, and in a close election with a lot of votes cast we really can’t say for certain who won. (Of course this could be alleviated by requiring supermajorities and eliminating secret balloting, but that will never happen.)