Does McCain already have the Election won?

[Cairber]

I have been looking at the numbers from the tracking and state polls and, while I know that democrats outnumber republicans, some of these polls have like 9% more democrats being polled than republicans. Has the tide on registrations really changed that much? I feel like it is a big unknown: "will the polls really see 9% more democrats show up on the 4th?".

But, then again, I seem to be always looking for something to worry about in this election. I'm also trying to not convince myself that Palin will kick butt in the debate by using talking points and giving short, exact answers that the American public likes (like what happened between McCain and Obama at that Saddleback forum)

[RedImperator]

This election appears to have taken a decisive turn towards Barack Obama. He's opened up eight point leads in most of the major national polls, drawn even in NC according to Rasmussen, and tied Ohio and Florida. The foreign policy debate I think was McCain's last and best shot to change the momentum of the race, and he couldn't get it done. Barring a new foreign policy crisis, dead hookers turning up in Obama's house, or an absolutely epic misstatement by Obama or Biden, I'd say McCain is toast. The economy will continue to dominate the news for at least the next two-three weeks, and if the economy comes first for most voters on election day, McCain will lose.

"The fundamentals of the economy are strong" is going to be remembered as the beginning of the end for the McCain campaign. Things started turning against him when he said that. And now that his excellent adventure to Washington has apparently blown up in his face, I just don't see how he can recover. If there were two or three months left in the election he would still have a pretty good chance, but I don't think he can come back with things breaking so hard against him right now. Without the intervention of some unusual or extraordinary events, there's just not enough time for him to first stop the bleeding and then get some momentum moving back in his direction.

ARGH! No! What day is it? Is it 4 November? No, it's 1 October. There's a month to go--more than a month. A month ago, everyone was in a screaming panic because McCain had a 2 point lead; there's plenty of time for the race to turn around yet. Obama's numbers among independents are still soft, he's fluctuating between behind and ahead and tied among white women, nobody knows what the turnout will be among new and young voters, the pollsers' weighting could be wrong (as Cairber pointed out), the undecided numbers are still enormous, and while there's an interesting paper out there now that suggests otherwise, there's still the Bradley effect out there.

No celebrating yet. Remember New Hampshire? I'd prefer not to repeat that experience. There's still a lot of work to do and plenty that could go wrong between now and Election Day.

[General Zod]

But, then again, I seem to be always looking for something to worry about in this election. I'm also trying to not convince myself that Palin will kick butt in the debate by using talking points and giving short, exact answers that the American public likes (like what happened between McCain and Obama at that Saddleback forum)

Palin doesn't have anywhere near the level of public speaking experience McSame does, let alone Biden. If she manages to do anything other than get floored in the debate judging by her performances so far, I'll be very surprised.

[Tribun]

I know that it is still a whole month, and thus the number right now aren't the final word. It however doesn't look good for McFries. But this his how they react if they don't like the numbers:

The article in question

SIREN – Quinnipiac University – “Obama Over 50 Percent In Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Quinnipiac University Swing State Poll Find 00 Debate, Palin's Fade, Economy Put Democrat On Top. … No one has been elected president since 1960 without taking two of these three largest swing states in the Electoral College.”

FLORIDA: Obama 51 – McCain 43 post-debate
OHIO: Obama 50 – McCain 42 post-debate
PENNSYLVANIA: Obama 54 – McCain 39 post-debate

McCain pushback on Florida polls: “Our polling shows us up 7. My guess is they over sampled blacks and under sampled Cubans.

McCain pushback on Q-polls: “These polls are laughable. We hope Obama thinks they’re true. The national tracking is clear: Some polls have us down 2 percent, some 4, some as high as 6. How could you have national numbers like that, but have those kinds of numbers in three of the largest, most competitive states in the country? These states are bellwethers because they closely mirror national demographics. Given the volume of campaigning in those states, we expect that they are close to the national track – if not tighter.”

[CaptJodan]

How many people and how many times has McCain been told he's toast? I thought he was out after being down in his funding and practically bankrupt. I'm glad that Obama is up in the polls, but I'm not even close to celebrating till November 4th. The American public's opinion is too easily swayed by stupid shit that might show up between now and then for me to be excited about this.

[irishmick79]

This election appears to have taken a decisive turn towards Barack Obama. He's opened up eight point leads in most of the major national polls, drawn even in NC according to Rasmussen, and tied Ohio and Florida. The foreign policy debate I think was McCain's last and best shot to change the momentum of the race, and he couldn't get it done. Barring a new foreign policy crisis, dead hookers turning up in Obama's house, or an absolutely epic misstatement by Obama or Biden, I'd say McCain is toast. The economy will continue to dominate the news for at least the next two-three weeks, and if the economy comes first for most voters on election day, McCain will lose.

"The fundamentals of the economy are strong" is going to be remembered as the beginning of the end for the McCain campaign. Things started turning against him when he said that. And now that his excellent adventure to Washington has apparently blown up in his face, I just don't see how he can recover. If there were two or three months left in the election he would still have a pretty good chance, but I don't think he can come back with things breaking so hard against him right now. Without the intervention of some unusual or extraordinary events, there's just not enough time for him to first stop the bleeding and then get some momentum moving back in his direction.

ARGH! No! What day is it? Is it 4 November? No, it's 1 October. There's a month to go--more than a month. A month ago, everyone was in a screaming panic because McCain had a 2 point lead; there's plenty of time for the race to turn around yet. Obama's numbers among independents are still soft, he's fluctuating between behind and ahead and tied among white women, nobody knows what the turnout will be among new and young voters, the pollsers' weighting could be wrong (as Cairber pointed out), the undecided numbers are still enormous, and while there's an interesting paper out there now that suggests otherwise, there's still the Bradley effect out there.

No celebrating yet. Remember New Hampshire? I'd prefer not to repeat that experience. There's still a lot of work to do and plenty that could go wrong between now and Election Day.

That's why I loaded up my post with caveats

Obama seems to have developed a pretty strong advantage in the electoral college, and polls have only started to reflect the reaction to McCain's stunt with the bailout bill. Obama is in a position where he can afford to lose a state like Ohio and still win, and McCain doesn't have that kind of cushion. I don't think that McCain's dip is officially done yet, but it's telling that he's been tied or behind for almost all of the electoral cycle except for the brief stretch after the GOP convention. McCain couldn't make much of an impact on the polls with the foreign policy debate. If you can't get a bounce from that debate when the topic is your strongpoint, you're in a lot of trouble.

IF the economy remains the dominating news story for the remainder of the election, I just don't see how McCain can win since it's an issue which clearly favors Obama.

[RedImperator]

I know that it is still a whole month, and thus the number right now aren't the final word. It however doesn't look good for McFries. But this his how they react if they don't like the numbers:

The article in question

SIREN – Quinnipiac University – “Obama Over 50 Percent In Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Quinnipiac University Swing State Poll Find 00 Debate, Palin's Fade, Economy Put Democrat On Top. … No one has been elected president since 1960 without taking two of these three largest swing states in the Electoral College.”

FLORIDA: Obama 51 – McCain 43 post-debate
OHIO: Obama 50 – McCain 42 post-debate
PENNSYLVANIA: Obama 54 – McCain 39 post-debate

McCain pushback on Florida polls: “Our polling shows us up 7. My guess is they over sampled blacks and under sampled Cubans.

The Quinnipiac poll does seem to be an outlier in Florida. Rasmussen, SurveyUSA, and even PPP (a Democratic outfit) have it tied, Obama -1, and Obama +3, respectively. That said, they're on drugs if they think they're up by 7.

McCain pushback on Q-polls: “These polls are laughable. We hope Obama thinks they’re true. The national tracking is clear: Some polls have us down 2 percent, some 4, some as high as 6. How could you have national numbers like that, but have those kinds of numbers in three of the largest, most competitive states in the country? These states are bellwethers because they closely mirror national demographics. Given the volume of campaigning in those states, we expect that they are close to the national track – if not tighter.”

Actually, Research2000 has them down by 10 nationally. Anyway, though, they're right about Ohio: everyone else has the candidates within a few points of each other, with no clear advantage. On the other hand, while the most recent Quinnipiac poll for Pennsylvania is showing an abnormally high lead, Muhlenberg and Rasmussen both have Obama up by 8, Franklin and Marshall have Obama +5, the last Quinnipiac poll shows Obama +6, and SurveyUSA shows Obama +6. You have to go back to the Rasmussen single-day poll on the 23rd to find someone who shows Obama as low as +4. They're just plain wrong about Pennsylvania; Obama has a clear lead there.

[Falkenhayn]

These are the current Real Clear Politics averages:

Ohio: Obama +2
Florida: Obama +1.4
North Carolina: Obama +0.7
Virginia: Obama +3
Pennsylvanian: Obama +7.7

Only the lead in Pennsylvania is statistically significant. This is very encouraging, but I'll believe the blowout (which this is looking like) when I see it.

[RedImperator]

The Real Clear Politics map is fun because you can see the outcome if you move states from one column to the other. What I think should be most encouraging for Obama and scariest for McCain is that if you switch Minnesota and Wisconsin to "Leans Obama", that's 269 EVs right there, without Virginia, North Carolina, Missouri, Indiana, Nevada, Ohio, or even New Hampshire.

On the other hand, if all the toss-ups except Minnesota (the toss-up I feel is least likely to go for McCain) break for McCain, Obama loses by 11 EVs. Flip Michigan or Pennsylvania (extremely possible for both), and I don't see where Obama can make up the numbers. That's why I'm not partying yet. There's a very believable path to victory for McCain. I'll relax if and only if I see Obama building bulletproof leads in the Rust Belt, preferably around Halloween.

EDIT: To further emphasize what I mean, let's take the narrowest possible Obama win.

These are all the Kerry states, plus Iowa, New Mexico, and Colorado, giving Obama 273 (the customizable map is available at DailyKos; I'm using screenshots because the only way to post it here would be using HTML).

Now watch what happens if Wisconsin flips:

McCain wins, 275-263. Worse, Nevada, the lowest-hanging swing state fruit, only brings Obama up to 268 if he flips it, and there aren't any other 3-5 EV states available. So Nevada is either useless or superfluous. If Obama loses Wisconsin, he needs to flip Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, or Florida to make it up. All of those are tougher targets than Wisconsin, where Obama had a big primary win and has been in the lead all year. Worse, you can probably safely assume whatever electoral dynamics cost Obama Wisconsin would be in play in the rest of the Rust Belt, so if he loses Wisconsin, it's unlikely he's going to make it up in Ohio or Indiana. In fact, I'm not convinced Obama will win Indiana in anything other than an EV landslide, so for the rest of these scenarios, we'll count Indiana as firmly red.

Now for a worse nightmare: Michigan flips.

Now Obama loses 282-256. He can make it up in one state only with Ohio or Florida; if he flips Indiana, Virginia, North Carolina, or Missouri, he'll need Nevada too. If you stick with the assumption that a loss in one Rust Belt state indicates a weakness in all of them, his only option is to flip Florida, or some combination of Nevada and a southern state, or two southern states.

The same math applies if Pennsylvania flips.


And now the worst possible disaster: two Rust Belt states flip.

Wisconsin and Michigan.

Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. For both these scenarios, Obama will need 1) Florida, 2) Ohio and Nevada, or 3) two southern states (Nevada is irrelevant in 1) and 3)).

But the worst calamity is this:

Pennsylvania and Michigan flip. Obama is now in a 35 EV hole (34 to tie and throw the election to the House). Even Florida isn't enough now. Obama needs 1) Florida and any other state, 2) Ohio, Nevada, and any other state, 3) all three southern swing states.

How likely are any of these? Well, I listed them in what I think is order of probability. If Obama loses both Michigan and Pennsylvania, I'll be surprised (barring, of course, a shift in McCain's favor near election day), but the thing I have to emphasize is that all of these, I think, are possible. There's plenty of good news in the electoral map, but there's good news for McCain, too. From where I'm sitting, Obama's first priority has to be to protect his lead in the Rust Belt; he can win without Virginia and North Carolina and even Florida, but without Michigan, he's toast. On the upside, if he flips Ohio, he's sitting pretty, and if he flips Florida, McSame is up shit creek. I wouldn't rule out the possibility of McCain flipping a Rust Belt state while Obama flips a Bush state in the south, since there are different electoral dynamics going on (in the Rust Belt, Obama is counting on working class, blue collar, older Democrats to feel the pain in their wallets more than they fear a liberal black president whose middle name is "Hussein"; in the south, McCain is trying to hold back the tide of young, wealthy, well-educated newcomers allying with Obama's black base).

[The Yosemite Bear]

trust me there are more then a few independants, hell theres even redneck republicans out here in yosemite that are for Obama. Oh and our die hards are voting Libertopian.

[RedImperator]

Ha! Should have waited a day. Today's Electoral-Vote projection. Minnesota goes solid blue, Nevada, Florida, and Ohio flip. Now we're seeing the states catch up to the national polls.

[Patrick Degan]

Ha! Should have waited a day. Today's Electoral-Vote projection. Minnesota goes solid blue, Nevada, Florida, and Ohio flip. Now we're seeing the states catch up to the national polls.

Texas, Mississippi, and Georgia are now weak GOP?! Ohhh, that cannot be happy news at Gimp HQ.

[The Spartan]

Wait... So, there might actually be hope, a slim hope, that my vote won't be thrown away by the electoral college?

[RedImperator]

Ha! Should have waited a day. Today's Electoral-Vote projection. Minnesota goes solid blue, Nevada, Florida, and Ohio flip. Now we're seeing the states catch up to the national polls.

Texas, Mississippi, and Georgia are now weak GOP?! Ohhh, that cannot be happy news at Gimp HQ.

Unfortunately, Obama is still behind 9, 8, and 7 points, respectively, and he's already shut down his operations in a lot of hopelessly red states. I don't think there's enough time or poachable votes to steal one of those states. It is a pretty good indicator of how bad things are right now, though. Bush carried all three of those states by at least 17.

On the other hand, yesterday's Quinnipiac numbers for Florida (Obama +8) are partially vindicated by Suffolk (Obama +4) CNN/Time (Obama +5), and InsiderAdvantage (Obama +3). The Q. poll is still an outlier, but not as much of one. Trust me, this is the news that has them panicking at McSame headquarters. For us, this would be like four consecutive polls showing McCain ahead in Pennsylvania.

[Tribun]

Well, THAT shows how desperate they already are. McCain gives up on Michigan!
McCain pulls out of Michigan

McCain pulling out of Michigan

John McCain is pulling out of Michigan, according to two Republicans, a stunning move a month away from Election Day that indicates the difficulty Republicans are having in finding blue states to put in play.

McCain will go off TV in Michigan, stop dropping mail there and send most of his staff to more competitive states, including Wisconsin, Ohio and Florida. Wisconsin went for Kerry in 2004, Ohio and Florida for Bush.

McCain's campaign didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Republicans had been bullish on Michigan, hopeful that McCain's past success in the state in the 2000 primary combined with voter dissatisfaction with Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm and skepticism among blue-collar voters about Barack Obama could make it competitive.

McCain and his running mate Sarah Palin spent the night after the GOP convention at a large rally in Macomb County, just outside Detroit. The two returned later last month for another sizable event in Grand Rapids.

But recent polls there have shown Obama extending what had been a small lead, with the economic crisis damaging an already sagging GOP brand in a state whose economy is in tatters.

A McCain event planned for next week in Plymouth, Michiigan, has been canceled.

[RedImperator]

Well, I suppose you can throw out the scenarios I posted yesterday that have McCain winning Michigan. I can still find plenty of scenarios where Obama loses, but taking Michigan off the board closes off a number of paths to victory for the Republicans.

[Azazal]

Well, I suppose you can throw out the scenarios I posted yesterday that have McCain winning Michigan. I can still find plenty of scenarios where Obama loses, but taking Michigan off the board closes off a number of paths to victory for the Republicans.

Hmm, they were still blitzing us with radio and TV commercials this morning. Can't say I don't disagree with the move, MI has been leaning democrat for some time now, and I'll gladly dance if the commercials are off the air.

[Ender]

Allow me to present the best celebrity endorsement to date: Youtube link

I still like Ike.

[Pelranius]

I hear that McSame's staff from Michigan (or at least some of them) are filtering into Maine. Maybe now would be the time for me to get active in the Bowdoin Democrats again, since Maine has a proportional distribution of the electoral votes, if I remember correctly.

[Surlethe]

Here's a bit of analysis, based on electoral-vote.com's nice handy summarized poll numbers, that's been cooking in my head this evening. In order to separate out the states where we have no idea what's going on from the states where we have an idea, let's (somewhat arbitrarily) say that all of the states electoral-vote.com lists as "barely" or "tied", we have no idea which way they'll turn. This can be illustrated with the interactive map at realclearpolitics.com.

In this simplified analysis, there are nine tossup states: Nevada (5), Colorado (9), Missouri (11), Indiana (11), Ohio (20), Virginia (13), North Carolina (15), Florida (27), and those maverick bastards in New Hampshire (4). Looking at this vote tally, you can see Obama's structural advantage in the electoral college: those states where he leads with 5% or more constitute 261 votes, while the states where McCain leads with 5% or more constitute 163 votes. That means Obama, without taking into account any of the tossup states, needs just 9 votes to clinch the election. There are, I think, 2^9 = 512 different ways of splitting these states between Obama and McCain (take nine slots, and you have two options in each slot)*. Now, consider that out of all of those 512 possibilities, there are only three ways for Obama to lose: lose everything, lose everything but NH, or lose everything but Nevada. So, naively giving each of these states a 50-50 chance of going for Obama, he wins 99% of the time. Do note that this is naive; Indiana, for example, goes for Obama only in a landslide victory.

Now, to reflect our uncertainty since we're still a tad more than a month away from the election, let's consider as won only those states where a candidate leads (in the electoral-vote.com weighted poll numbers) by more than 10%. That's the "Strong X" category on electoral-vote.com. Then Obama still leads McCain by nearly 90 electoral votes, 192 to 103. That means that, for every electoral vote Obama picks up, McCain has to pick up a tad more than two. The tossup states are: WA (11), NV (5), CO (9), NM (5), TX (34), MO (11), WI (10), MI (17), IN (11), MI (6), FL (27), GA (15), NC (15), VA (13), WV (5), OH (20), PA (21), NH (4), ME (4).

N.B.: These are both crude analyses. The election can still go both ways in a month. I just thought these were interesting thoughts to share.

*Combinatorics has always been my weak suit, so someone double-check me, please.

[CmdrWilkens]

There are a couple thoughts I wante dto toss out there:

1) The state polling will mirror national polling but true battlegrounds will emerge by looking at which states are ahead of the trend and which ones are behind the trend. For instance Michigan was already moving towards Obama even before he began to take off nationally which is probably at least part of the reason why McCain is pulling out. If Obama had advatnages that were already openingup his lead before the economic crisis gave him a boost then even a resolution ot the crisis OR a mirror image boost for McCain isn't likely to bring Michigan back in to play before other stats. Conversely Ohio and Florida are playing catch up with the national trends and Pennsylvannia is about on par with the trends. That makes all threee of those states more attractive opportunities from a purely polling perspective.

2) There are plenty undecideds out there but the enthusiasm gap is back in place which means that a lot of the polling movement right now is likely moreso McCain's support softening up and Obama solidifying his base. Naitonal party identification is about 40, 35, 25 D/I/R which means that Obama's enthusiasm gap is potentially the worse indicator for McCain since a strong and home base Democratic base (Obama is now pulling something like 90% of Democrats AND is doing so with a 60% plus enthusiastic or very enthusiastic) is most of the work Obama needed to do to set himself up with a strong structural advantage.

3) The early voting opportunity in most states favors the campaign which has the better ground game which is undoubtably Obama's. The Palinpick finally energized the Republican base but it means they are several months behind the Obama folks in terms of their contact lists. If voters are locking in now that frees up those same resources to reach further. I've heard the rule of thumb that every 12 voter contacts is 1 more person who votes that wouldn't already (though 12 voter contacts is a whole lot of doors, probably a whole day of one person's time), now consider the Obama organization which has more volunteers, more resources and is making more contacts now consider that same organizaiton getting all of its contact to the polls NOW...that means they no longer have to double back on their contact list and can reach even more folks securing even more votes. I know that 538 has generally rated ground game as bringing in anywhere from 1-5% above expectations and that could be enough to close the gap with undecideds at the end.

4) The national gap IS important. In the last 10 elections only Reagan closed a gap this size with this amount of time left. Folks point out that Obama enjoyed a similair high point back in June and that it would be gone by the end of August however that was 2 months of McCain picking away at the lead and he just doesn't have that much time left. Right now even if we took Obama as 5% up nationally for current polling then slashed half of it off he would still likely cruise to victory as a 2.5% national advantage still trasnlates into at least one of the flip states going for Obama. With hsi wide open map all it takes is one combination to work and with a 2.5% lead nationally he would carry several of the states we've been talking about. Time is now McCain's biggest enemy because he has to a) Stop the bleeding and b) Start picking up some points. He now only has 32 days to do so and in between he also has to keep from gaffing up and getting the bleeding going again. Is it doable? Sure but its also highly unlikely given the political environment.

5) Without harping again on a belabored point the electoral map favors Obama hugely at this point. If you knocked the aforementioned 2.5 points off of every one of the state averages he would still have the election won. He wins (in alphabetical order) CA (55), CO (9), CT (7), DC (3), DE (3), HI (4), IA (7), IL (21), MA (12), MD (10), ME (4), MI (17), MN (10), NJ (15), NM (5), NY (31), OR (7), PA (21), RI (4), VT (3), WA(11), WI (10). That's 269 EVs just slashing 2.5 points without trying to account for how or why which means one of the close toss-ups (VA, NC, NV, OH, FL, NH) would push him over the top and if not a toss to the House favors Obama based on the Democratic control of a majority of state delegations.

[Stormbringer]

Well, THAT shows how desperate they already are. McCain gives up on Michigan!

No big surprise there, really. The Republican leaning rural areas only produce a rough sort of par compared to the the cities and some suburbs. The state's been slammed by economic hardship for years now and I doubt you'd find many Republicans that are going to put guns and gays ahead of food on the table.

[Cairber]

Looks like the people in NH are jumping the McCain ship:

poor john

The last week and-a-half has brought plenty of discouraging news from around the nation for John McCain’s Presidential campaign and the latest polling from New Hampshire isn’t going to change that pattern. Barack Obama now enjoys a ten point lead in the Granite State.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in New Hampshire Obama attracting 53% of the vote while McCain earns 43%. This is the first time Obama has held a significant lead in the state since July and the first time he’s held a double digit lead since June. Polls in August and September showed the race to be a toss-up. In fact, less than two weeks ago, McCain was up by two points, 49% to 47%.

Obama's ground game is surging; we just need to keep up the enthusiasm for one more month. Canvassers are flooding into PA from NY; we are going out this weekend to shore up the vote in southeast part of the state (Philly suburbs). I am so amazed at how many volunteers are traveling state to state to do face to face time with the voters. The group I am with this weekend are going to be heading to Virginia next. We just have to keep this up.

[Xisiqomelir]

Bump

[Mr Bean]

Bad Xisiqomelir, Bad!
Thread locked
For humor value I'm moving both threads into Famous.