In McCain's favor is the ARG survey showing McCain with a 3 point lead in CO. This survey was actually released a week ago, but due to the weight of older polls that have now fallen off, the state just flipped the state today. Considering ARG's poor polling history (see here, a lower score is better), I question that poll's reliability. The latest CO poll is from a more reliable pollster (Mason-Dixon), and shows the race a tie, so things are clearly tightening up. Regardless of who is actually ahead there, expect that CO will probably switch back to the Barely Obama column tomorrow as that ARG poll falls off due to it's age. Hopefully we'll have another poll or two there in the next few days so we can have a better idea of where things actually stand.
| If the election were held today and... | Obama | McCain |
| ...all McCain <5% went to Obama | 375 | 163 |
| ...all Obama <5% went to McCain | 264 | 274 |
| Shift since yesterday: | +0 | -0 |
| Shift this week: | +0 | -0 |
(See this post for an explanation of these numbers.)
For the raw poll data and more details, see this days page on Electoral-Vote.com:
4 comments:
The Tuesday debate/forum will be in Nashville (where I live) and at a mainly white Baptist college (Belmont) built on the site of the summer home of Louisiana cotton plantation owners. While Metro-Nashville leans democratic, the state and the school leans to the far right. "Belmont students will be given top priority for any tickets" according to the website (http://www.belmontdebate08.com/ticketing). I would expect softball questions for McCain and hardball questions for Obama, with a McCain bump after the forum.
Maybe... Personally I doubt it. Unless it's just an open mic, which I seriously doubt, the questions will still be moderated and should be reasonably fair to both candidates. The students may ask the questions, but they almost certainly will have been screened ahead of time.
The other thing to keep in mind is that as far as polling is concerned, debates generally don't make that big of a difference. Barring a major gaffe, I would be shocked to see the numbers move more than a point one way or the other.
Sorry to be the relentless optimist, but I just don't see this as changing the dynamics of the race much...
And back on the topic of attack ads, Obama is responding hard to McCain's latest round off attack ads: keatingeconomics.com.
"Sorry to be the relentless optimist...."
Forgive me for my realism. I watched Gore lose in court and the swiftboating of Kerry.
This season we got past the Palin announcement, the Wall Street crash, and the the almost canceled debate. All the wild cards have not been played yet, the ugliest is yet to come, and Rove's men are on the job. Check the color of your glasses.
There's a difference between realism and pessimism... A realist looks at all the factors and judges them in a non-biased manner even if that leads them away from their preferred outcome. A pessimist looks at all the factors, dismisses them and assumes the worst case scenario. I'd suggest that you've crossed over into the latter category.
You're right that all the cards have not been played, but you can only shift so many people's opinions in a short time. For McCain to win, he would need to win eight of the 9 states that are currently considered swing states by 270towin.com. That's certainly not impossible, but would be a very big accomplishment considering that almost all of those states are currently polling in Obama's favor by a decent margin (Obama has averaged a 5 point margin in the last five polls in FL, for example, and if McCain loses FL he has no realistic path to victory even if he won all the other swing states).
If McCain's numbers looked better in virtually any context I would be more concerned, but virtually every number is in Obama's favor. I just don't see McCain's favorability numbers on the economy, for example, improving substantially over the next few weeks considering he doesn't appear to show any aptitude on the subject.
Obama needs to win only one or two states beyond those that he's polling at +5 points. Given current polling, even with a big downturn, he will likely win at least four or five of the swing states. Even assuming that some of those states are stolen, they will have a tough time turning enough to make up that big of a margin while still maintaining plausible deniability.
People have already started to vote, so if McCain wan't to make a dent in Obama's support, he better do it quick. Since the McCain campaign doesn't seem to understand the notion of discretion (for example announcing that they're pulling out of MI rather than doing it quietly or announcing that they're pulling all positive ads and going straight negative rather than just doing it), I tend to doubt that they have anything new on Obama or they would have used it already or at least hinted at it.
I am a pessimist by nature too, but sometimes I think that Optimism is warranted. If you want to help offset the attacks that you foresee, the Obama campaign is always looking for volunteers.
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