According to Rasmussen's data, 45% of voters are firm in their vote for Obama, and 38% for McCain. 13% say they may change their mind, and 4% either totally undecided or voting for a minor candidate. Using Rasmussen's weightings, which are the least favorable to the Democrats, McCain would need to win well over 70% of those 17% in play in order to move ahead. As at least half of the leaners at present are leaning towards Obama, he will have to make a significant move to get Obama leaners to become McCain voters. Let's go to the video tape, using overly simple arithmetic:
New Ohio, Minnesota Polls Either Outliers Or This Race Is Over (I'd Bet The Former)
There are a couple state polls worthy of notice, but probably worthy of dismissal as well, both favorable to Obama. The Columbus Dispatch has a poll in Ohio giving Obama a seven point lead, 49-42; either it's an outlier or it reflects the fact that Ohio is a state that would significantly be affected by a recession and that for a change, 10% more people identify themselves as Democrats than Republicans. That being said, this is out of line with other recent polls in the Buckeye State and reflects a huge lead in the heavily urban Northeast of the state, including Cleveland where there was concern about voter fraud in 2004. Remember, though, that Ohio has early voting, which has already begun, and may either take some of the pressure off the Nov 4 voting process or supply thousands of additional votes to invalidate. That being said, Ohio has a Democratic governor and Secretary of State this year, which could make a significant difference in terms of attempts to invalidate urban votes. Also, a Star-Tribune poll in Minnesota would appear to contradict a trend tightening that race (and SUSA's statistical dead heat noted yesterday), showing Obama with a 17 point lead; the S-T's last poll on September 11 showed the race a tie. Hard to figure, really, probably an outlier.
Some Images May Be Too Graphic
And now, a new feature, so we dont' have to look at the words: graphs of the four major daily tracking polls since I started doing this a few weeks ago. I'll probably put this in every Sunday, just because the news cycle is slower, unless people choose to release their tax records. The trendlines tell us, I think, a lot more than noodling about any individual number could. The consistency of the leads in each of the polls is what the McCain campaign should be concerned about, and why it is reallocating resources and going to essentially 100% (from what seems like no more than 94%) negative campaigning from henceforth.
Obama Counterpunches Before McCain Punches
It appears that the McCain campaign has been a little slow on its feet for some time, and is also telegraphing its pitches, like a pitcher who moves his arm a certain way before every curveball. Having announced that they were going to go strictly negative from this weekend on, the Obama campaign had time to take that announcement and put out a hard-hitting ad calling McCain "erratic" and "bad for the country" before the McCain tactic (or was it a strategy?) kicked in, so there is now the situation where there is an ad calling McCain erratic airing before angry McCain spots verging on the scurrilous in their criticism of the Democrat. The pump is primed, the attack may carry less weight. Additionally, as some people's criticism of Obama is that he has been too cool, if such a thing exists, he's able to take charge of the narrative by pointing out the opposite of calmness in his opponent.
Obama's still wearing gloves, but he's got brass knuckles on underneath them.
Your Friends Are Worse Than My Friends
While Gov. Palin is dredging up a connection between Sen. Obama and former 60s domestic terrorist Wililam Ayers (notwithstanding the fact that Obama was eight years old when Ayers was involved with terror activity), the AP, which has shown a generally Republican tilt through the campaign, has excoriated her for an attack which was "unsubstantiated and carried a racially tinged subtext that John McCain himself may come to regret." This is dangerous because if you are counting on the persistence of a Bradley effect, you don't want the idea that they may in fact be racists in people's minds when they go to the polls; you want them to be deeply closeted, latent racists, not worried about whether they're blatant ones. On the other side, Paul Begala on Meet The Press in response to the Ayers criticism noted McCain's board membership of a right wing group affiliated with the World Anti-Communist League, which ADL has called "a gathering place, the forum, the point of contact for extremist racists and anti-Semites." Nobody outside of the extreme fringe left is calling John McCain an extremist racist or anti-Semite, which I'm as sure as I can be he is not, anti MLK-holiday vote aside, but particularly with his Keating Five past in the last great banking crisis the McCain campaign needs to be exceedingly careful about guilt by association issues.
OK, so that's a lot of pictures (one of which probably doesn't make a lot of sense) and stuff, so we'll close here because it's a weekend and there are leaves to rake. One even got in to my apartment.
See you tomorrow! Oh, and don't old notes are at http://trackingpolls.blogspot.com . Impress your friends! Confound your enemies! Collect 'em all!
John
Herbert Hoover Quote Of The Day
The President is not only the leader of a party, he is the President of the whole people. He must interpret the conscience of America. He must guide his conduct by the idealism of our people.
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