(Dark Blue (133): Obama +7.6% or more
Lean Blue (96): Obama +2.6%-+7.5%
White / Toss-up (68): Obama +2.5% to McCain +2.5%
Lean Red (78): McCain +2.6%-+7.5%
Dark Red (163): McCain +7.6% or more)
Here is the swing state chart:
Swing State Overview (270 to win, 269 to tie)
(Swing States are defined as states closer than 5.0%. If a state isn’t listed, it isn’t that close right now.)
* = Reflects polling from before the Republican convention
Just as he falls behind in national polls, McCain has just moved into the lead in the electoral college. This odd development is due to the information lag between new national polls and new state polls. Much the same happened last week, as McCain moved clearly into the lead in national polls, but never lead by more than 270-268 in the electoral college (and sometimes didn’t lead at all). McCain’s lead in today’s chart probably reflects where the campaign was five or six days ago, just as Obama’s swing state lead last week represented the state of the campaign a few days before that.
Hopefully, at some point, there will be tracking polls in the closest states, thereby giving us up to date information on the actual state of the campaign. For now, what state by state information we have can be found in the extended entry.
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Obama didn’t preface this bit by saying how much he honors John McCain’s service to America:
This is what happens when you see seven years of incomes falling for the average worker while Wall Street is booming, and declare – as Senator McCain did earlier this year – that we’ve made great progress economically under George Bush. That is how you can reach the conclusion – as late as yesterday – that the fundamentals of the economy are strong.
Obama didn’t start qualify this graph with a paean to McCain’s time as a POW:
Make no mistake: my opponent is running for four more years of policies that will throw the economy further out of balance. His outrage at Wall Street would be more convincing if he wasn’t offering them more tax cuts. His call for fiscal responsibility would be believable if he wasn’t for more tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, and more of a trillion dollar war in Iraq paid for with deficit spending and borrowing from foreign creditors like China.
When Obama attacked McCain on leadership, thereby hitting right at the heart of McCain’s argument to be President, he didn’t preface the attack with an homage to McCain’s military record:
Just today, Senator McCain offered up the oldest Washington stunt in the book – you pass the buck to a commission to study the problem. But here’s the thing – this isn’t 9/11. We know how we got into this mess. What we need now is leadership that gets us out. I’ll provide it, John McCain won’t, and that’s the choice for the American people in this election.
None of these attacks would have been improved by telling people about McCain’s time as a POW before landing the attacks. The absence of such compliments to McCain is refreshing, and conveys a real confidence from Obama. Back when Obama was prefacing all of his attacks on Obama with a statement on how much he deeply respects John McCain’s service to America, frankly it made what he said afterward sound like he was walking on eggshells. Honestly, apart from repeating McCain’s message, and apart from irritating many of his own supporters, paying tribute to John McCain before attacking him just made the criticisms that followed sound weak and wimpy. These attacks, by contrast, sound confident, on message, and sharp.
This might actually be a general tendency among Democrats. While most national Democrats seem to act like they are walking on eggshells whenever they talk about foreign policy or social values, they have historically always seemed more confident when discussing the economy. It really seems to me that most leading Democrats are convinced they are only the majority party when it comes to economic policy, but not when it comes to social values or foreign policy. Even if they are centrists, they all just seem so much more confident–even brash–when the focus in on economic issues.
I like Democrats when they talk like this. Makes me proud. Wish I would see this side of them more often.
Even as Obama is moving ahead of McCain, not all is lost for the senior Senator from Arizona. While Palin was more popular than McCain, only twelve days later McCain is now comfortably outperforming Palin.
Today, a new poll from Rasmussen shows Obama leading Palin 50%-43%, while at the same time McCain led Obama by 1%. McCain also outperformed Palin in a hypothetical match-up against Biden.
Palin’s favorable ratio has also dropped from +21% to +14%, including a 10% increase in her “very unfavorable” rating in just eleven days. That is about 1% of the country shifting toward a “very unfavorable” opinion of Palin every day for the last eleven days. That, um, isn’t very, um, good.
The sheen is starting to wear off on Palin. The major problem, I think, is her inability to produce new content. Spending an entire week preparing for a new speech or interview doesn’t give people much to work with. In the down time, it is easier to expose lies about bridges, jokes about hockey moms grow stale, and faux outrage about said jokes gets played out fast. In politics, you have to produce new content in order to grab headlines and win news cycles, but Palin just isn’t producing much new content. Further, what she little she does produce will always be worse than her convention speech.
Ironically, Palin raised her expectations so high after the convention, that it is virtually impossible for her to ever meet them now. Of course, she only pulled that off because expectations were lowered so massively before her speech. The irony is delicious.
The four tracking polls for today have all been released, and collectively they show Obama ahead 46.75%–45.25% (links can be found in quick hits). Even in the two tracking polls where McCain leads by a single point, Gallup and Rasmussen, Haggai’s numbers indicate a strong possibility that Obama led in polling conducted last night. So, it now seems possible–or, actually, it now seems likely–that Obama has regained the national lead.
This is very good news. There are probably several factors behind Obama’s newfound momentum, four of which I discuss in the extended entry.
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On several instances recently, the Obama campaign has referred to McCain attacks as “lies.” They even ran a television ad to that effect:
Today, the Obama campaign it continuing a different line of attack on McCain. By using McCain’s absurd statement that “the fundamentals of our economy are strong,” they are pushing the “out of touch,” narrative that connects to McCain not knowing how many houses he owns, to being in Washington for 26 years, and to McCain himself saying that he is out of touch.
More on the new line of attack in the extended entry.
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Due to popular demand, I have created a swing state chart that is slightly modified from my normal methodology. Most importantly, I removed all of the Zogby Internet polls. Also, I removed three states, Indiana, New York and West Virginia, whose status as swing states was dubious at best, and based off of single polls that were either old or outliers.
With those tweaks, and looking only at polls conducted entirely after the Republican convention, here is the swing state chart:
Swing State Overview (270 to win, 269 to tie)
(Swing States are defined as states closer than 5.0%)
This chart conceptualizes the campaign as essentially a seven state affair right now. With Obama starting at 221 electoral votes, and McCain starting at 227 electoral votes, the seven closest states are Colorado, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Virginia. Such a close forecast is given further credence by yesterday’s tracking poll average, which suggested a 46.0%-46.0% tie.
While these numbers add plausibility to the notion that the campaign is exactly tied right now, I have to admit that my gut does not matchup with that prognosis. Something just feels wrong with these numbers. Maybe it is that the two smaller, newer tracking polls are the better ones for Obama. Maybe it is that the swing state chart only shows a tie because Obama is tied in Virginia, and it seems strange that he would drop nationwide but not lose any ground–or even gain–in Virginia. Maybe it is that I dropped some polls from this average (Zogby tracking, plus the most recent polls from Indiana, New York and West Virginia), just because they “felt” wrong. Maybe I am just a numbers worshiper, but it “feels” wrong to remove polls that “feel” wrong–event he Zogby Internet polls that are, in many cases, obviously wrong (like when they showed Obama up eight in North Carolina).
Pollster.com currently shows McCain ahead by 1.7% nationally, and by 278-260 in the electoral college if every state is pushed to make a choice. Forecasting a slight McCain lead just feels more accurate to me right now than an exact tie. However, since analyzing polls shouldn’t mix with talking about your feelings, I’ll just admit that both scenarios–a slight McCain lead and an exact tie–are real possibilities right now.
Update: Obama leads by 4% in today’s Daily Kos tracking poll. That is a hopeful sign.
While this isn’t exactly a continuation of Matt’s engaging Disguising Disagreements in Strategy-Talk, from earlier today, I certainly had it in mind when I was writing it. To what extent should we consider campaign tactics and organization an expression of ideology?
Ever since the progressive netroots came into existence, some of the more movement oriented members of the community have wondered how the netroots can earn the respect of large political and media institutions, “get a seat at the table,” or otherwise have influence of the national political and media scene. During the 2008 campaign this has come into particularly sharp focus, as many have wondered how the netroots can influence the Obama campaign or, hopefully, the coming Obama administration. Developing answers to such a question is difficult, both because a campaign we all want to win is still a dogfight, and because the top-down nature of the Obama campaign doesn’t seem to respect any netroots organizations outside of its own new media department.
Now, I think that the recent expansion of grassroots, progressive activism is a very, very good thing. Even beyond the obviously positive potential and, in many cases, already real impact it has had upon our national political scene, the expanded opportunities for civic engagement brought on by the progressive netroots is, in and of itself, a boon to democracy. However, I also have to admit that those reasons are not sufficient for us to expect respect or influence within powerful Democratic institutions. As I explain in the extended entry, there is nothing about the progressive netroots that forces anyone who does not respect progressive grassroots organizing to either respect “us” or grant “us” any influence whatsoever. Unless you value progressive grassroots activism in and of itself, you have no reason to respect the progressive netroots.
More in the extended entry.
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I have to travel to Ithaca this afternoon for a conference, so I won’t be able to blog until late. Of course, I couldn’t blog this morning, because the power was out at my parent’s place in Liverpool, New York until noon. Sometimes, I feel like the gods are conspiring to prevent me from blogging.
Notably, Obama has tied McCain according to the four tracking polls (you can find links to them all in quick hits). Across the four polls, both Obama and McCain are at 46.0%. This is the first dead in a while, and it good news. Perhpas the Palin slide is real, and McCain’s popularity really was tied to her.
(Dark Blue (133): Obama +7.6% or more
Lean Blue (84): Obama +2.6%-+7.5%
White / Toss-up (100): Obama +2.5% to McCain +2.5%
Lean Red (48): McCain +2.6%-+7.5%
Dark Red (173): McCain +7.6% or more)
For the first that I can remember, the dark red states outnumber the dark blue states–and by a substantial amount of electoral votes, too. Here is the swing state chart:
Swing State Overview (270 to win, 269 to tie)
(Swing States are defined as states closer than 5.0%)
* = Reflects polling from before the Republican convention
The state of the campaign has reversed itself entirely from over the summer. Now, McCain holds a 2-3% national lead, while Obama needs to sweep a long run of swing states in order to pull off the victory. Hopefully things will turn around, but I see no indication of Obama improvement lately. At best, the national polls are stagnating, and the state by state polls continue to swing toward McCain.
Sorry I don’t have more good news, but I am no longer one of those bloggers who argues with polls instead of accepting them. Hopefully, Palin’s recent slide will impact McCain, given that there is some indication she was partially responsible for his recent rise. There also has been some incremental imporvement in the tracking polls recently, so hopefully that is a sign of a positive rend.
Also, I am travelling today, so light blogging until this evening. State by state details in the extended entry.
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Here is the latest update on my personal ads, looking only at how they performed since Friday:
McCain Ad #1:
8,935 search impressions
46 click thru’s
Average cost per click: $0.57
McCain Ad #2:
8,816 search impressions
46 click thru’s
Average cost per click: $0.60
I created the second ad in order to see if I could make one that performed better than the first ad. As it turns out, their performance is almost identical. So, instead of dropping one and replacing it with a new ad, I have decided to take both of these ads on the road.
More in the extended entry.
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First, after two consecutive days where I didn’t receive a single impression on my revised Palin ad, I paused the campaign. I will try it again later, but I am sure that the problem is with how I am setting up the ad, not that no one in the entire state of Pennsylvania is searching for Sarah Palin online.
Second, I created a new McCain ad, in order to compare it’s performance to my first McCain ad. As I promised earlier today, here is the new ad:
Ad reports and comparisons in the extended entry.
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It’s easy for me to go to Washington and, frankly, be somewhat divorced from the day-to-day challenges people have.”
This seems like a useful gaffe from McCain, and I am glad that the Obama campaign is seizing on it. However, when it comes to determining the effectiveness of the ad, I admit that I don’t actually know if it will work.
So, I am going to create a Google ad on it, comparing it’s performance to my current Google ad. It won’t cost me any more money–I’ll just run them in rotation for the same slot.
My gut says that this is a good attack because it fits in with a broader narrative Obama is trying to push: McCain is out of touch. However, since I don’t actually know it will work, I’ll make sure to test it.
I feel very frustrated right now because I have a difficult time pinning down the cause of McCain’s continued polling increase. Obama peaked toward the end of June, and apart from the Democratic convention, has been on a slow, downward trend ever since. I want to know why this is the case, because I want to understand how this trend can be reversed. It is only from that point that I believe I can develop better ideas on what I can do personally to help positively influence the result.
Why is McCain performing well, relative to where the general election was in June? In the extended entry, I explore some possibilities, and offer a path toward figuring out which is correct.
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During the two-week stretch of VP announcements and conventions, horserace junkies and political forecasters had to rely upon daily tracking polls in order to determine the state of the campaign. The lack of state polls gave us no other option. However, with waves of state polls over the past four days, the drought is clearly over. At this point, only three pre-convention swing states are still to show new numbers, making the post-convention state-by-state polling picture pretty clear. McCain has, literally, the narrowest possible lead in the Electoral College: 270-268:
Swing State Overview (270 to win, 269 to tie)
(Swing States are defined as states closer than 5.0%)
* = Reflects polling from before the Republican convention
Originally, this post was about Obama still being ahead in the Electoral College, pending a post-convention poll from Nevada. Just as my luck would have it, a Nevada poll showing McCain up 1% came out right after I made the original post. Aarrgghhh.
Anyway, after a wave of state polling today, I hope you enjoy the updated swing state chart.
(Dark Blue (181): Obama +7.6% or more
Lean Blue (40): Obama +2.6%-+7.5%
White / Toss-up (88): Obama +2.5% to McCain +2.5%
Lean Red (59): McCain +2.6%-+7.5%
Dark Red (170): McCain +7.6% or more)
New polls from Alabama, Colorado (2), Florida (2), Georgia (2), Maine, Michigan (2), Mississippi, North Carolina (3), Ohio (3), Pennsylvania and Wyoming are added to the averages, making for a nearly complete set of post-convention swing state polls. Here is the swing state chart:
Swing State Overview (270 to win, 269 to tie)
(Swing States are defined as states closer than 5.0%)
* = Reflects polling from before the Republican convention
Note that when the states are pushed to make a choice, Obama still leads. And the polling in this chart is almost entirely post-Republican convention. Further analysis and state by state details in the extended entry.
(Dark Blue (181): Obama +7.6% or more
Lean Blue (66): Obama +2.6%-+7.5%
White / Toss-up (89): Obama +2.5% to McCain +2.5%
Lean Red (32): McCain +2.6%-+7.5%
Dark Red (170): McCain +7.6% or more)
New polls from Alaska, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Virginia and West Virginia. Here is the swing state chart:
Swing State Overview (270 to win, 269 to tie)
(Swing States are defined as states closer than 5.0%)
Even if it is only 1.5%, McCain’s national lead is still clear right now. However, I wonder if it will be so short-lived, that he might never actually take the lead in the electoral college polling averages. There simply might not be enough state level polls to prove McCain is ahead right now. So, despite a 1.5% McCain national lead, available polling still shows Obama slightly ahead 247-202. Even when states are pushed to make a choice, McCain still doesn’t reach 270 (although such a situation would be McCain 265-263 Obama, with a Colorado recount pending).
Still, I wouldn’t feel very good if the election were held tomorrow. Also, the electoral map is starting to look very similar to 2000 and 2004. Fortunately, with Colorado emerging as the equal of Ohio and Florida, we now have more paths to victory than in the previous two elections. State by state details in the extended entry.
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It’s true. The counter-protesters at the anti-war rallies I went to told me it was true:
Strock said reports of anti-war rallies reach the soldiers in the Middle East and hurt troop morale.
“Marching for peace and saying you want them home isn’t support. It really irritates them. To them, it’s a slap in the face,” he said. “What they really want is for people to say, ‘We support you and why you’re there.’ “
Opposing the surge also hurts troop morale. Cheney told me this one:
The Bush administration claims that any congressional resolution opposing escalation would hurt the morale of U.S. troops. “It would be, I think, detrimental from the standpoint of the troops,” Vice President Cheney said last week.
And that’s why — there was an earlier question about has the President said anything to people in his own party — they’re reminders to all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do. This is not a time for remarks like that; there never is.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the flap was a reminder that people “need to be very careful about what they say.”
“People are dead, and that’s unfortunate,” Rumsfeld told reporters. “People need to be very careful about what they say just as people need to be careful about what they do.”
Remember, speaking out hurts our troops in Iraq. The American people need to be careful about what they say, and the press does, too. And so do Obama supporters who question the Obama campaign.
More in the extended entry.
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The progressive blogosphere spends a lot of time discussing campaign strategy. Every day, thousands of times over, we critique campaign messaging, debate the quality of ads, muse about targeting strategies, and suggest new lines of attack. The problem is, as Matt has often pointed out, the only help the Obama campaign wants comes in the form of campaign donations and volunteers to work on field operations. So, no one is really listening to our suggestions. We are not making a difference on messaging.
There isn’t anything wrong with donating to the Obama campaign, or in volunteering to do voter registration, phonebanking, or other forms of field work. Those are important things to do, and there is real pride and dignity to being a political volunteer. The problem is, if you feel like I do, that it just isn’t enough. For one thing, the Obama campaign has been consistently losing ground for the past two plus months, so it doesn’t feel like what it is doing is working. Second, not everyone’s best political skills lay in field organizing, especially if, like me, you are introverted (I’ve done some real field work, but it has been painful). Third, donating to a campaign is often a one-off endeavor, and lacks of satisfaction of continued engagement. Besides, maybe the money won’t be spent effectively, anyway. Finally, if the netroots are just taking orders from large Democratic institutions, then we really just don’t seem like a very interesting movement to me. Whatever happened to taking on the system and changing it with people power?
Taking the solid advice of Open Left commenter Will, rather than just complaining about this state of affairs, I decided to start running my own ads. Instead of feeling disempowered by narratives I can’t do much to change and messaging that doesn’t speak for me, now I have my own anti-McCain ads. The two ads will appear across the entire state of Pennsylvania, on about three-dozen different Google keyword searches for John McCain and Sarah Palin. It feels really good, too. Here are the ads:
It is my money, my message, my targeting. Based on the keywords and cost-per-click rate that I chose, Google estimated that my ads will result in 25 click-thrus a day, costing me a little under $10 a day. However, the ads will be viewed by exponentially more people and, because of the keywords I chose, only by people looking for information on the campaign. Further, as I learn what messages work and which ones don’t, if I want to fit daily talking points or the latest scandal, I can easily change the ad. Also, I can change the locations where I am targeting on a moment’s notice.
You can do this too. In fact, you should do this too. In the extended entry, I explain why and how.
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Man, is McCain campaign ever grouchy lately. In the last twenty-four hours, his campaign has:
Taken a common metaphor that McCain himself uses as an insult;
Claimed that using stem cell research to support special needs children is “sinking to a new low”;
Complained about laws protecting children from child molesters;
Continued to run ads complaining about celebrities
Man, the guy just complains all the time, even if there isn’t anything to complain about. No wonder he hired someone who called America “a nation of whiners” as his chief economic advisor.
More in the extended entry.
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McCain has a new, stupid, false ad out about Obama where he claims that Obama has passed a law to mandate sex education for kindergarten. However, just because it is stupid and false doesn’t mean it won’t be effective. In fact, it might demonstrate a truism about contemporary American politics: if you are explaining, then you are losing.
More in the extended entry.
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Once again, the national polling picture looks slightly less disastrous than it did on Sunday night. Here are the complete post-convention numbers:
National Presidential Trial Heats, Post-Convention
Source
McCain
Obama
Margin
9/6-9/8
ARG
46%
47%
+1%
Diageo
45%
44%
-1%
Gallup Track
49%
44%
-5%
NBC-WSJ
46%
47%
+1%
Rasmussen
48%
48%
Even
Simple Mean
46.8%
46.0%
-0.8%
9/5-9/7
ABC-WaPo*
46%
47%
+1%
CBS
46%
44%
-2%
CNN
48%
48%
Even
Gallup USA*
50%
46%
-4%
Zogby**
50%
46%
-4%
Simple Mean***
47.4%
46.1%
-1.3%
* = This table uses the registered voter number for polls where both are available. I will switch to “likely voters” on October 1st.
** = Zogby was conducted from September 5-6
*** = The second simple mean is for all ten polls
Analysis in the extended entry.
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(Dark Blue (186): Obama +7.6% or more
Lean Blue (65): Obama +2.6%-+7.5%
White / Toss-up (101): Obama +2.5% to McCain +2.5%
Lean Red (3): McCain +2.6%-+7.5%
Dark Red (183): McCain +7.6% or more)
New polls from Florida, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin (UPDATE: also from North Carolina) continue to help fill out the post-convention polling picture. The new map looks kind of familiar. With the exception of Indiana and the Dakotas, this is almost exactly the map that one would except in a close campaign if demographic trends were extrapolated onto the 2004 results. Here is the swing state chart:
Swing State Overview (270 to win, 269 to tie)
(Swing States are defined as states closer than 5.0%)
It looks like the Obama “firewall” that I outlined a few weeks ago–Kerry states plus Colorado, Iowa and New Mexico–remains the surest path to victory. Nevada might have emerged as a back-up plan, but I wouldn’t count on North Dakota anymore. It has probably gone the way of Alaska, Georgia and Montana before it: red states where Obama was way overperforming, but is now probably losing by substantial amounts.
With Iowa and New Mexico probably secure, I keep coming back to Colorado as the most important state of this election. If the campaign remains this close, it will probably serve the same role as Florida in 2000, or Ohio in 2004. If, on the off-chance that you have the ability to target resources in multiple areas in this election, it would be wise to focus them on Colorado above all other states.
State by state details in the extended entry.
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Like anything involving 125 million participants, elections are complex systems. As such, it is important not to adopt singular, reductive views on the state of the campaign. In such a vast, complex system, multiple causes are likely to be impacting where the campaign stands at any given moment. As I explain, and hopefully prove, int he extended entry, McCain’s current advatnage in this campaign does not stem just from racist voters, or just from McCain’s popularity, or just from the Republican convention, or just from mediocre paid media from the Obama campaign. There is no singular cause, and we pretend otherwise at our own peril.
More in the extended entry.
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Jerome Armstrong thinks that polling right now is even more favorable to McCain than it looks, because there are too many Democrats in the surveys. As evidence, he points out that McCain is well ahead among independents, and so the only way Obama can still be close is if there are more Democrats in the electorate than there have been in recent elections. The rather obvious rebuttal is that there might very well be more Democrats in the electorate than recent elections, especially since most polls indicate there will be more.
I used to bother looking at the partisan make-up of polls. I don’t bother anymore. Four years ago, I learned my lesson, and since that time I have decided to stop trying to be more clever than scientific experiments of public opinion. There is only one scientifically valid way to determine the percentage of self-identified Republicans and self-identified Democrats in the electorate: conduct a public opinion survey measuring the number of self-identified Democrats and the number of self-identified Republicans in the electorate. The percentage of self-identified Republicans and self-identified Democrats in a poll cannot be determined by deductive reasoning before surveys. It has to be conducted through inductive data collection by surveys.
If we want accurate information from polls, we cannot impose our assumptions on top of the data. As such, in order to determine the state of the campaign, rather than looking at internals of individual polls, I now try to look at the broad trend across all polls. National polling trends like the one at Pollster.com will almost always be within 2-3% of the actual margin. That is really about as accurate as I feel the need to be, especially since being accurate to less than 2% on a regular basis might not even be possible.
McCain maintains his lead in the Gallup poll today, apparently stabilizing at a 5% lead for now. However, that is the best poll for McCain, with no other outlet showing him up by more than 2%. Three (New Diageo shows McCain +1%) Two polls show a tie, and two even show Obama ahead by 1% (ARG and ABC-WaPo RVs). Given that these polls are all trying to measure the same reality, right now it is likely that reality is somewhere between the two ends of the spectrum. Obama isn’t ahead by 1%, but McCain isn’t ahead by 5%. It is probably, as Pollster.com posits, McCain by about 1-2% right now. That is both the mean and the median of the nine national polls conducted entirely since the convention (note: I am not including the poll showing Obama up 5%, since it was conducted partially before Palin and McCain spoke). Given that those nine polls utilized about 14,000 interviews, I find it pretty hard to argue with that data. So I won’t.
(Dark Blue (201): Obama +7.6% or more
Lean Blue (50): Obama +2.6%-+7.5%
White / Toss-up (104): Obama +2.5% to McCain +2.5%
Lean Red (18): McCain +2.6%-+7.5%
Dark Red (165): McCain +7.6% or more)
New polls from Alaska (2), Colorado (2), Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan (2), Minnesota, Ohio (2), Washington and Virginia (2). Also, I have cycled out a huge number of old polls that were taken before the VP and convention season began in earnest. From now trough October 21st, only polls taken within the last 15 days will be included in the averages (with exceptions for states where no polls were taken in the last 15 days, of course). Here is the swing state chart:
Swing State Overview (270 to win, 269 to tie)
(Swing States are defined as states closer than 5.0%)
State polling is in a real state of flux right now, making it best to take these numbers with a big grain of salt. Some of the polls were taken during the Biden announcement period. Some were taken during the Democratic convention. Some were taken during the period when Palin breifly made a crater in McCain’s numbers. Still others were taken over the most recent weekend. As such, rather than being a snapshot of how things stand today, it is a mish-mash, palimpsest composite of the last two weeks. Some of the numbers will be weird as a result.
I am feeling a bit better as the day wears on. The Gallup poll from last night was by far the worst poll of the last twenty-four hours. The problem was that it was also the first poll of the last twenty-four hours. At first, it felt like an exact repeat of 2004, but since that time it is clear that it isn’t quite that bad. It still isn’t great, and McCain is ahead now, but it just isn’t quite as terrible as I thought.
State by state details in the extended entry.
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A comparison of presidential and congressional polls this cycle quickly shows that Obama is running well behind congressional Democrats. However, in 1992, 1996, 2000 and 2004, the Democratic nominee for President outperfomed the collective Democratic result for the national U.S. House elections. It’s true:
Here are the registered voter numbers, where available, for the seven national polls released today (it is about three weeks too early to start polling likely voters):
National Presidential Trial Heats, 9/8
Source
McCain
Obama
Margin
ABC-WaPo
46%
47%
+1%
CBS
46%
44%
-2%
CNN
48%
48%
Even
Diageo
44%
44%
Even
Gallup USA
50%
46%
-4%
Gallup Track
49%
44%
-5%
Rasmussen
48%
47%
-1%
Simple Mean
47.3%
45.7%
-1.6%
Rasmussen is the only poll in this chart using likely voters. The reason I focus on registered voters for the other six is that likely voter models are only really useful, at most, about two weeks before the voting actually begins. In this election, early voting will begin en masse in about five weeks, so in three weeks I’ll start using the likely voter models.
Is being down by 1.6% immediately after the Republican convention a disaster? Normally, I would say no. Were this 2004, I actually would have been thrilled with a deficit of 1.6% right after the convention (Kerry was down about 6%). However, as I discuss in a post set to appear at 7:00 p.m. eastern, this number actually pretty bad for 2008. Democrats really just should not be losing national elections this year, not even in the time period right after the Republican convention.
On the front page, top headline section of Obama’s campaign website right now, there are four rotating top stories. The first one is a link to a video entitled “Barack Responds.” Here is the video:
Here is my transcript of the first twenty seconds of the two-minute video:
You wouldn’t know that this was such a critical election by watching the convention last night. I know we had our week and so the Republicans deserve their’s. But it’s been amazing to me to watch, over the last two nights, if you sit there and you watch it, you are hearing a lot about John McCain, and he’s got a compelling biography. He’s a POW.
Ugh. Again, we have to sit through the plug for McCain before hearing the criticism. This is not a minor plug either, as McCain is basically running on being a POW. What follows from that point is decent, and I am not going to complain about it. However, the first thing you hear when watching the top video on Obama’s website right now is Barack Obama himself repeating John McCain’s own argument on why John McCain should become President. That strikes me as a big problem, and drowns out much of the criticsm that follows the compliments.
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I want to win this election. I want to defeat John McCain and Sarah Palin. I want to stop a continuation of Bush policies. I want to end the political effectiveness of a forty-year conservative narrative of backlash identity politics. I want to make some kind of difference in this fight, and not just sit on the sidelines. So, what can I do?
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