The Liberal Crab’s Poll of “Poll of Polls” – 31 October 2008

Popular Vote

Obama – 50.5% +6.3

McCain – 44.2%

Electoral College

Obama – 356

McCain – 182

Good news from the popular voting front.  It appears that McCain’s march to tighten the popular vote has stalled out over the last few days.  Obama picked up .1% and McCain dropped .1% since yesterday.  For five days, McCain’s support has remained between 44.3-44.4%.  Unless the polls are incorrect, it looks like McCain’s ceiling may have been slightly lower than the 46% we saw back in September.  The bottom line is that Obama’s support has been solid above the 50% line.  This is great news as it guarantees a popular vote win (providing the numbers hold), regardless how the late independents break.  I tend to think they will break for McCain, but it won’t be in the 75% range.  Also remember, that this is a two person horse race in most polls.  Add Barr and Nader and I think you will see a net -1% for McCain.  McCain now has to make up over 2% per day to capture the popular vote lead.  That looks very unlikely.

We finally see some movement in the Electoral College numbers.  Obama’s lost 4 more EV’s and that’s a total of 9 since last week.  This has been soley the result of a gradual move from each pollster  of Indiana from Obama to McCain.  For the last week I’ve warned we’d probably see Obama finish in the 330’s-340’s for the final poll on Monday.  I still think that will happen based on where Missouri and North Carolina end up (a total of 26 electoral votes).   Regardless, everything remains stable.  The polls don’t appear tightening to any significant degree. Pennsylvania remains solid.  Colorado and Nevada have strengthened for Obama.  Virginia also remains steady.  Obama is also now looking at outside chances of picking up Montana, North Dakota and perhaps Arizona.  The bigger news is that McCain hasn’t pressured any states that Obama ‘needs’ to win back into a tight race.

As my previous post has indicated, if you believe the polls (and I do) then this race is essentially over.  I think even if there was an October surprise, it would be difficult to have McCain come back (depending on what the surprise was).  The only type of surprise that probably could cost Obama the election is one that directly implicates him in something nefarious or awful.  Looking at how the Bin Laden tape of 2004 and the drunk driving arrest affected the last two races, it probably moved the race only a 1-2%.  That would still give Obama a comfortable lead.

Karl Rove’s Electoral Map

For those who want to see Dr. Evil’s map, I am including it below:

 

 

I like Rove’s map because he puts the % that the candidates are up.  You need 270 to win.  McCain needs to win all the ‘yellow’ states and then pick off 41 more Electoral Votes.  If he takes Pennsylvania – he’d still need to get Ohio.  If he gets Ohio, but not PA, he’ll need to take Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada.  He could also take  Ohio, Virginia and Nevada.  Here’s the problem, if the polls are correct, he is not going to make up 11 points in Pennsylvania.

There is definitely a doable strategy for McCain – but he’s got to be perfect.  He’s got nine or ten states he is either behind or tied that he needs to win.  And in all the ‘toss-up’ states, except Montana, he is statistically insignificantly behind.

How tough is it to win those states?  Rove’s map matches nearly everyone else’s – including Real Clear Politics (RCP).  In 2004, the RCP map got only one state wrong in their prediction – Wisconsin.  It went for Kerry when they had predicted Bush.  More comparisons.  In 2004, about a week out, the Electoral College was split 234 for Bush, and 211 for Kerry.  McCain only has 157 in his column.  In addition, in every single toss-up state (except Wisconsin), the candidate who was leading – no matter how slightly – won that state.

The question you need to ask yourself is whether or not you believe the polls.  Do you believe in a Bradley Effect?  Do you not believe more Democrats will show up than in 2004? Do you believe that the youth and African American population will increase?  If you do, then the race is over.  If you don’t, then it still is going to be tight.

My theory is based on a finding by Karl Rove on his website:

There has been an explosion of polls this presidential election. Through yesterday, there have been 728 national polls with head-to-head matchups of the candidates, 215 in October alone. In 2004, there were just 239 matchup polls, with 67 of those in October. At this rate, there may be almost as many national polls in October of 2008 as there were during the entire year in 2004.

There are two factors that tend to have me believing the polls.  The first is there are a lot more of them this year.  We do not know the quality of them, as Karl Rove goes on to say in his article, but the fact is they all tend to be in alignment – somewhat.  That is, the traditional pollsters who have good reputations are showing the same basic results as the new ones.  At the National level – McCain has not led one poll in over a month.  That’s 215 polls.  Not one outlier shows McCain with a lead.  Second, there is a little more variability in the state polls, but the outliers are at both extremes and if you go to the mean, I believe you got the right result.  Look, if you have three pollsters who are doing the polling, there’s a good chane their methodology could be wrong.  But when you have 15-20 pollsters in a state, this will reduce variability.  We see some extremes in the state polls, but most are around what the mean ends up being.

The second factor is I believe the pollsters are getting better.  Polling is a science.  The pollsters are learning from each other (e.g. cell phones, etc.) and improving the quality from mistakes they have made in previous elections.  A ‘Dewey Wins’ banner will never again occur the same way it did in 1948 when they stopped polling a week out. They learned.  They learned in 2000 and in 2004.  Additionally, folks like Nate Silver and Sam Wang and Mark Blumenthal have made a science out of projections based on multiple polls.  They’ve also helped keep pollsters honest and throwing out bad polls.

Believing the polls are acurate, means I believe Obama will win this election.  There are too many states that the pollsters would have to be wrong about for Obama to lose.  It’s not like 2000 or 2004 when it was going to come down to 1 or 2 states.  No, for McCain to win, it has to come down to 9 or 10 states.  Thinking of how close Ohio and Florida (and New Mexico) were in the previous election cycles – it’s hard to believe that McCain would come out on the right side of all those close battles.

Keep Donating?

The GOP and main stream media have done a great job of confusing the issue with regard to money being spent by the campaigns.  In actuality, the funds advantage goes to McCain and the Republicans.  As of October 15th, McCain had $84M and Obama had $76M (he spent $105M for the first half of October).  Why are the numbers so different than what’s being reported?  This takes into consideration donations to the National Committees.  While they cannot use the money directly for the candidates, they can make the case and their ads are no less powerful than the candidates.

So believe it or not, please donate (if you can) to the campaign TODAY.  Per the article below, you can see that McCain is committing more than Obama in battleground states for the weekend. A few more dollars can at least keep the advertising equal.  The election is too close in some of these states and the ad advantage may make the difference.

From Jonathan Martin at Politico:

McCain/RNC put more money on TV

 

Obama still enjoys an advantage on the airwaves, but McCain and the RNC are using the last few days of the campaign to spend their remaining dollars trying to catch up in a handful of key states.   The money is in part being re-allocated from states that are increasingly seen as out of reach.

Brad Todd, who runs the RNC’s independent expenditure arm, told me that they would ultimately be up in Ohio, Florida and Virginia with between 2,000-2,500 points — a saturation buy that ensures voters won’t miss the GOP message.

AP’s Jim Kuhnhenn has more:

After weeks of being out-advertised by Barack Obama, Republican presidential candidate John McCain and the Republican Party are nearly matching the Democratic nominee ad for ad in key battleground markets.

Ad spending and ad placement data obtained from Democratic and Republican operatives show that in the closing days of the campaign the Republican voice has grown louder in states such as Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia and Pennsylvania.

For instance, Obama had been scheduled to buy about $2.5 million in Florida ads for the last week of the campaign. McCain is now set to spend about $1.6 million and the Republican National Committee added $1.5 million to their buy in the state this week. Obama appears to have added more weight to his ads since.

The ad war is especially noticeable in Florida’s central corridor, which includes Tampa, Orlando and West Palm Beach.

Those near-parity levels in crucial states come with a price. McCain has had to trim back his ads in Minnesota, Maine, New Hampshire and Wisconsin, giving Obama even greater edges there.

A map of the states where McCain and the RNC are spending their money also illustrates the defensive nature of their 11th hour strategy. Except for Pennsylvania, the McCain-GOP focus was on trying to hold states that President Bush won in 2004.

The Liberal Crab’s Poll of “Poll of Polls” – 30 October 2008

Popular Vote

Obama – 50.4% +6.1%

McCain – 44.3%

Electoral Vote

Obama – 360

McCain – 178

The race for the popular vote has some what steadied out now.  McCain was down .1% and Obama was even.  This is the fourth straight day where McCain has been between 43.3% and 43.4%.  Not much movement.  He’s got four campaigning days left, which means he needs to gain 1.5% every day.  But looking over the 19 days the poll has reported, Obama is down .2% and McCain up .6% – a net of less than 1%.  Looking at the polls today, they were flat to slightly leaning toward Obama.  That’s a good sign.  Some of the Poll of Polls has Obama above 50%, some right below 50%.  That threshold is important as it wouldn’t matter how the undecideds broke – particularly with his lead in the Electoral College.  I suspect the polls will point up slightly for Obama tomorrow, based on his Obama-on-the-air-all-the-time technique he’s been employing.  I do caution, I believe there is probably another 2% of McCain support that will ‘come home’ to him prior to the election.  I also believe Obama will stay at about 50%.  The one question – why can’t McCain gain back that 2%?  I think there is an aspect to the McCain support that hasn’t been analyzed yet and maybe influencing why he can’t get above 45%.

Is there anything really to say about the Electoral College?  It really hasn’t changed.  The state polls are probably trending more to Obama.  At the very least, they aren’t tightening.  McCain still needs to flip six states in four days – this includes winning Pennsylvania.  Obama has 311 Electoral Votes in states where he has at least 50% of the vote.  McCain can still win – but everything has to go right for him.  But it’s not impossible