The Liberal Crab’s – Poll of “Poll of Polls” – 17 October 2008

 

Today’s Poll of “Poll of Polls” introduces two graphs.  The one on the left shows the popular vote.  The green bars represent the Y-axis on the right side and shows Obama’s popular vote lead.  The graph on right shows the Electoral Vote count.  270 to clinch.

Popular Vote

Obama – 50.0% +6.4%

McCain – 43.7%

Electoral College

Obama – 360

McCain – 178

Several notes about today’s results.  First, the Electoral College has had no change from yesterday to today.  Additionally, while Obama’s support has dropped slightly over the last couple of days, McCain has been unable to really improve his support.  On October 12th, the first day of the poll, he was at 43.6%.  Today, he is at 43.7%.  Obama, today, is even 50% – lowest since the poll started.  Overall, in reality, the race hasn’t moved in a week.  Obama was up 7% on Sunday and is up 6.4% today.  That’s well within the statistical noise.  Three of the polls are within .2% of each other: 6.7, 6.7, 6.9.  Nate Silver’s model at fivethirtyeight.com is really the outlier at 5.5% – so it’s drawing down today’s polls.  Remember, Nate’s model is projecting to November 4, rather than today and he factors in some tightening of the race.  The Electoral College remains the same as yesterday.  I would expect sometime next week that you’ll see some reduction in Obama’s Electoral total, but very little movement towards McCain.  The state polls that provide the EV count tend to lag the National polls.  With the slight tightening we see Nationally, I would expect some of the closer battlegrounds may drift away from Obama in some polls.

Overall, though, the race has been steady for steady for the last six days.  That’s a good sign for Obama.  An even better sign for Obama is he continues to remain right around 50%.  That’s what all the polls have been showing has been about Obama’s floor since early October.  McCain really hasn’t broken over 46% – that seems to be his ceiling.  If Obama can maintain 48-50%, he’ll probably be in good shape.  If you start looking at the numbers, McCain has to break through his ceiling and Obama has to drop through his floor.  I doubt robocalls, negative campaigning, and Joe the plumber can break these thresholds.  It’s going to take something more major – an October surprise or a big mistake by Obama.  If Democrats swant to take more solace, even if the popular vote tightens, he still has a commanding Electoral College lead (as I am writing this David Gergen is making that exact point on CNN).  Some say, in the battle ground states, Obama’s lead might be a point or two higher.

The race is not over – 17 days is still plenty of time for a well guided GOP ship to turn course and make large in roads.  The question is, if and when the race tightens, does Obama have a strategy to protect his advantage. Right now he is on offense and going into very very red states.  That knocks McCain on his heels.  But if the race tightens, Obama must react quickly and aggressively to defend the states he needs to win.

Interesting Article – Part 1

That other Comeback Kid – McCain stays in the fight

By E.J. Dionne Jr.,  

NEW YORK 

Whenever McCain is up, he has this uncanny ability to bring himself down. He turns in his best performances when he’s in danger of losing it all. 

Wednesday’s debate in New York did not so much decide the election as prevent it from being decided in Obama’s favor. It was that important, and McCain knew it. By finally managing, on the third try, to be forceful without being obnoxious, McCain set himself up for one more comeback in a campaign where coming back has been his central preoccupation. Maybe McCain just wants to out-comeback the Comeback Kid. 

Obama confirmed that he plans to win on sweeping themes, not specifics…. But Obama also promises to encourage ”Republicans and Democrats to forget all the arguing and finger-pointing and come together.” 

Calling for an end to finger-pointing and pointing fingers at the same time is a neat trick if you can make it work….Obama has pulled off this balancing act with great skill. The central question of the campaign is: Can he hold his balance for two more weeks? 

McCain did everything he could to shake Obama off the high wire, and Obama got very wobbly at moments. With McCain pressing Gore hard for an explanation of his positions…

 

Interesting article?  From – 2000.  For those getting a little nervous or wanting to see how things looked in previous elections, this was an article from Boston’s Daily Globe on 10/19/2000.  I hope Mr. Dionne, doesn’t mind the comparison. The Words in italics have been changed.  Mostly – Bush to Obama and McCain to Gore. It’s not a transcript that works verbatium – Obama, for instance, has put some details to his plan.  At the time, Bush was up 45.9 to 41.2 according to the Real Clear Politics average.

Take aways?  Real Clear Politics is pegging the election at 49.5 to 42.6 (a 6.8 lead vs. a 4.7 lead) and 20 days out (in 2000) vs 18 days today.  The election did tighten very much in 2000 – obviously.  With Gore picking up slightly more of the popular vote.  The biggest difference was that the Electoral College in 2000 was 212 (Bush) vs 202 (Gore) aggregated across pollsters.  This year it is 286 (Obama) vs 158 (McCain).  A much more significant deficit for McCain than for Gore.  The moral of the story is the election did tighten and this year’s election will too.  As Obama has pointed out yesterday – we can’t get complacent and Democrat’s are famous for snatching defeat out of victory.  If polls close, as they seem to be doing, we need to remain positive, focus on getting out the message, and realize we will win this election if we stay vigilent.