| An Alternate Theory
As mentioned above, there's There a fairly straightforward explanation for the shift from early August to now: the normal consolidation of the bases, combined with the drop in undecideds as low-info voters finally tune into the race. With the differing distributions of the parties' bases, this can readily accomodate an increased Obama lead in national polls, even as the red states potentially available to him have dropped in number.
My interpretation doesn't dispute this interpretation so much as it refines and/or refocuses it. My interpretation draws on the mythos/logos distinction I've been talking about again this weekend. I want to drive home the point that it's not all just airy-fairy talk. It has real, hard-nosed consequences. Remember: what's most important about this distinction for our purposes is that mythos involves the meaning we make of things--even the most mundane (Joe the Plumber? You betcha!)--while logos involves the mechanics of how things work--even things of beauty and imagination. Empirical truth is irrelevant for mythos. Endlessly repeated lies that fit together well and satisfy deep longings-those are the "truths" of mythos.
Put simply, McCain has gone all in to solidify his base with a deep mythos campaign. Logos has been utterly abandoned. Just as everything factual we were first told about Sarah Palin has turned out to be questionable at best, so, too, the same turned out to be the case about Joe the Plumber, only the debunking happened at Warp 9 this time. And therein lies the core to what's happened: the mythos/logos balance of the political system has somehow changed. Conservatives still have a distinct advantage in pushing their mythos, but it's got less of a grip on independent voters, and less of a shelf life with the media. The political system has yet to adjust to this. Obama is still running his own mythos campaign, albeit with a shrewd use of bits of logos here and there.
"ACORN stealing the election" is the latest conservative foray into deep wingnut mythos territory, and since it's not aimed directly at Obama, it has-at least initially-been more successful, and could even somewhat blunt Obama's victory. Let's hope Obama is smart enough to realize this, and how much of a difference it could make for his ability to govern successfully. There are some hopeful signs so far, and even CNN seems to have regianed a bit of sanity. But regardless of all else, the economic crisis simply has folks much too focused on the nuts-and-bolts logos-type questions of how to get out of this mess to be swayed by the usual conservative mythos of cloven-hooved, baby-eating liberals.
Chris may well be correct, and the "bump" Obama received from the economic crises seems to have passed. (We really won't know how accurate these polls have been until election day-if then.) One thing's for certain, however: The wingnut mythos has been dislodged, and the bipartisan mythos has taken center stage. The bipartisan mythos can't actually solve the financial crisis, but it can make Obama seem calm, thoughtful, assured and assuring, steady in as storm, etc., etc., etc. The wingnut mythos won't go away, but it's lost its traction in the swing states, even as it has consolidated itself in red state America--the "real parts" of America we've been hearing about lately.
That's my mythos/logos alternative theory to explain the pattern below.
Chris's Analysis: Swing States Then and Now
Because I used Pollster.com in my August 2 diary--what with its more varied colors, and easy-to-copy tables of polls--I'm going to do the same below. But I want to begin by comparing Chris's charts first.
The number of toss-ups has shrunk from 9 to 3. Six are now "lean Obama", one is now "lean McCain," and one is not "solid McCain," while one "lean McCain" (North Carolina) and one "solid McCain ("West Virginia") have now become tossups.
Thus, just looking at the tossup races, it's clear that Obama is in a much stronger position than he was in early August.
However, if we're thinking transformation here--and crushing the GOP's spirit, as Kos has been writting about more and more lately--then we also have to note that four "lean McCain" states are now "solid McCain": Arizona, Texas, Georgia and South Carolina.
Pollster.com: A Tougher Look
The picture from looking at Pollster.com's maps then and now, though far from dour is less encouring in terms of gains: Pollster showed Obama stronger then, compared to Chris, and weaker now, with the number of swing states dropping from 10 to 7. The new "lean Obama" states are Colorado, Virginia, and Florida. The new "lean McCain" is Montana, and the new "solid McCain" is Arizona. Ohio moves from "lean Obma" to tossup, and West Virginia moves from "solide McCain" to tossup.
Overall, these changes clearly favor Obama, but five states have also moved from "lean McCain" to "solid McCain": South Dakota, Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, and South Carolina. Combine this expanded McCain base with the larger number of toss-ups, and the map looks less promising in terms of a "crush their spirit" transformation:
Pollster.com: Early August
Pollster.com: Oct 17
We can get a more detailed view by recalling my earlier breakdown into four regions. I'll hold off on the close-up maps and detailed poll analysis, and instead just do a quick verbal run-through of each of the regions.
Mountain Swing/Battlegrounds
In this region, two "tossups" have moved: Arizona is now "solid McCain" while Colorado is "lean Obama". While not surprising or disappointing in a conventional "this race" framework, the chance of defeating McCain in his home state was clearly a "dagger in the heart" type of possibility with more than "just" symbolic satisfaction attached. McCain is not long for the Senate, and carrying the state in the presidential election would make Democratic chances to win his seat next cycle considerably brighter.
Northern Plains Swing/Battlegrounds
This was the most promising group, though smallest in terms of EVs. Montana and North Dakota were tossups, South Dakota was "lean McCain". After the GOP Palin-fest in nearby Minnesota, this whole region appeared to be lost. But now North Dakota is back to "tossup," and Montana is "lean McCain," leaving only South Dakota as "solid McCain." While hopes have faded here, the more recent boune-back--particularly in North Dakota, could be really huge in terms of psychic impact. If Obama somehow won both Montana and North Dakota, it would be an earthquake of epic proportions that could fundamentally alter the GOP in Great Plains and upper Mountian West. The futures of Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming and Idaho would suddenly be way up in the air, and the prospect of the GOP as a regional party of the Deep South would be an order of magnitude more real than it is today.
Midwest Swing/Battlegrounds
The map here has actually become slightly more favorable to McCain--but that's more of an artefact than an underlying reality. Two states have changed: Iowa from "lean Obama" to "solid Obamna"--a meaningless change, as everyone except John McCain has known for a long, long time that Obama was going to win this state--and Ohio from "lean Obama" to tossup, which would be troubling, except that this completely inverst that actual underlying dynamic of the race:
Likewise, Missouri looks more encouraging than first meets the eye:
Indiana remains a big challenge, with Pollster's trend pretty steady around 3 points favoring McCain, but a good ground game, a demoralized GOP base and skillful use of Lugar's praise for Obama on foreign policy could pull this out.
Southeast Swing/Battlegrounds
This is the best news for Obama from the regional breakdowns: Virginia and Florida both moved from tossup to "lean Obama," and North Carolina stayed "tossup" (while Kagen surged in the Senate race). What's more, beneath the surface, that North Carolina "tossup" looks a lot better now than it did before:
Virginia and Florida would be plenty big enough by themselves to begining pealing away the outer layer of the South for the Democrats. But winning North Carolina would put both Georgia and South Carolina on notice that they will almost certainly be battleground states in 2012.
West Virginia
West Virginia is Pollster's only current swing state that wasn't part of my August 2 breakdown into four battleground regions. Obama still trails there, but only by 2.8% according to Pollster's trend, and Chris has it at just 0.7 for McCain. This would be another one of those states that would send shock waves well beyond its Electoral College weight.
A Big-Picture Look Forward
In my August 2nd diary, I included some maps that summarized the best that candidate could hope for, given the maps at the time. Obama's best looked like this:
As of right now, the only state on this map marked for Obama that looks firmly out of reach is Arizona. He probably won't get Montana, and Indiana looks tough, too, but on the other hand he's got a shot at West Virginia. So this map holds up surprisingly well.
McCain's best looked like this:
It would, quite simply, take a miracle for McCain to come anywhere close to realizing this map. Sarah Palin is more likely to get an advanced degree in particle physics than for this to look anything like the map for the 2008 election.
Factoring in the SUSA polls with Edwards as Obama's VP, a maximal Obama map looked like this:
While there's no real chance that the Electoral College is going to look like this in 2008, there's probably a pretty fair chance that it could look like this--or even better in 2012, depending on how well Obama and the Democrats handle the incredible mess that BushCo is leaving them. Indeed, if Obama handles the economy well, he should be able to pick up West Virginia and Kentucky as well in 2012. The seeds are definitely here for a realigning election, followed by consolidation of new, Democrtatically-dominated Seventh Party System.
My Alternate Theory, Again
"But how does all this relate to Paul's alternate theory?" you might ask. Or even, "Alternative theory? What was that?"
Good questions. Second one first: My alternate theory is that we can best understand the pattern of Obama's partially realized EC gains vs. broader national poll gains in terms of a failed play that McCain made based on the traditional GOP strategy of pushing a social conservative mythos, an over-arching framework of meaning (Secessionist Sarah Palin, good! Terrorist Bill Ayers, bad!) This play has failed for a variety of reasons, not least because of the economic crisis, as the power of logos has emerged as more salient--at least for now. However, Obama did not capitalize on that emergence of logos so much as he used it to tip the balance toward the bipartisan mythos and casting himself in the leadership archetype of that mythos--a pose of balance, steadiness, thoughfulness, reassurance, etc. (Hence, a reprise of praising Reagan, as opposed to a logos-driven appeal to the political legacy of FDR, and a call to update it for the 21st Century.)
As for the first question, I've already partially answered it, but I don't pretend to answer it fully. It is, after all, a matter of interpretaiton. I put my framework out there for you to test for yourselves, to see how much sense it makes for you. But three points are worth considering:
(1) The states that do remain in the balance seem to be precisely those where appeals to social conservatism vs. economic populism seem to be most salient. And those competing appeals can profitably understood in terms of the a conservative mythos on the one hand, and a progressive logos on the other.
(2) Obama's lead on August 2 was blindingly obvious in the polls, but was almost universally obscured by the M$M coverage, an example of Versailles's "balanced"/"bipartisan"/"serious" mythos. Challenging this was part of the purpose of my diary then, as I cited a post at Pollster.com, by UMass Amherst Poly Sci Prof Brian Schaffner which explained:that "Obama had been tied or ahead in 50 consecutive national polls through Sunday," and that meant there was only a .0000000000000009 chance that the race was actually tied at that point. In my mythos/logos framework, this was an example of the power of the "bipartisan" Versailles mythos, which had started out very much favoring John McCain, due to his long-term deep symbiosis with the media.
(3) However, a funny thing happened in the weeks after that, as McCain caught up--but only by drastically shifting gears with his pick of Palin. It was McCain's abrupt shift from one mythos to another that first momentarily saved his campaign, but then started to destroy it. And it was everyday myth-makers like the ladies on The View who took the lead at this point. (Though, ironically, they also seemed to have a better grasp of logos than most "hard" journalists seemed to.)
McCain did everything imaginable to try to stiffle the Troopergate Report--an exmple of logos potentially come back to bite him--and he was largely successful, but for all the wrong reasons: Palin had already been first discredited, and then rendered irrelevant as the financial crisis swelled to the fore. The last-ditch attempt to blame minorities for the financial meltdown--and to tie this to ACORN, "voter fraud" and Bill Ayers--is simply too late in the game, with a fragmented rightwing noise machine in shambles. The pieces of the mythos he wants to use are still there, but mythos doesn't work very well when it's in pieces. That's the whole point: it provides a comprehensive framework for meaning.
Or else it fails. |
