Roughly speaking -- and accounting for his inferior position in the electoral college -- McCain needs to gain about half a point per day every day between now and November 4 to become a favorite in the electoral college. That is not an easy task; from the nadir of Obama's numbers, which we put at 9/12, to his peak, which we put at 10/11, Obama was gaining about a quarter of a point per day on average. That is, by the standards of a presidential campaign, very rapid movement. But McCain needs to get those numbers down about twice as quickly as Obama got them up, and he does not have any debates or other major public events to assist him.Of course this doesn't include election fraud or the like, but it does help illustrate just how big the hill that McCain has to climb to pull off a victory.
Monday, October 20, 2008
The Size of McCain's Hill
Nate at FiveThirtyEight.com has this interesting detail for those of you still concerned about a McCain comeback:
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6 comments:
Nightmare Scenario Builder
Hackable states and counties (red, orange, magenta, includes PA, VA, FL, IN, CO, GA)
+ Republican Governors (lax oversight)
= upset McCain win?
Thanks for that verifiedvoting.org link. I had been looking for something like that. Your scenario is definitly the nightmare one.
I'm not terribly concerned about Republican Governors. It's Republican Secretaries of State that worry me. They're the ones who oversee the election. Don't suppose you know of a similar map or a list of their party IDs?
Your scenario is possible, but some of the states you name are polling 10+ point in Obama's favor. If the election were stolen, it would be obvious. I'm optimistic that things will go better this year, but election fraud is definitely my big concern.
For Sec.s of State, you could troll through each state gov site or just wikipedia, and when you get enough unique names, try googling for a list someone else has already made.
I found a lot of names on a Republican site here: http://www.statenewsshot.com/?cat=14
Sites like Liberal Oasis, Bradblog, truthout, Daily Kos,blockbox voting, and others may already be looking at this or will have some useful links. I haven't had time to look closely, read, browse around much.
I just thought McCain's new PA strategy sounds fishy, like a set up for a (DIebold) win there. The others, (FL, VA, OH, IN, GA, etc) were they set up as McCain wins, might be somewhat believable as a last-minute swings toward McCain, but PA needs a stronger narrative to justify why he will be getting nearly 100% in many counties (in my nitemare scenario). The phony fuss about ACORN is another Rovean tip-off that the other side is planning something, like Bush attacking Kerry's war record when Bush was the one AWOL doing cocaine, or Palin saying Obama palins around with terrorists when she and her husband are the ones who have supported separatist movements in Alaska, Bush accusing Gore of pride (as opposed to a humble foreign policy) and too much nation-building. Attacks cover their weaknesses. Pointing out their original weakness then is dismissed as retaliation, allowing their weakness to be transferred to their opponents as their opponents' weakness. Not sure why this keeps happening again and again and nobody gives it a name. "Swiftboating" is part of it but people don't seem to understand how that worked. But I see that happening again.
Call me paranoid, but democracy isn't always handed to you on a silver platter as people in the US are prone to believe. Power isn't always given up with a smile. If that (vote-theft) happens too many people will refuse to believe what they see in front of their own eyes, won't recognize reality. What's needed is to be prepared for that possibility. Democracy is taken away piece by piece everywhere in the world every day and has to be fought for to get it back. Obama has an army of lawyers one hopes he would use, and that in support, people would fill the streets and basically shut down or take over any dishonest state govts. I'm not sure we can trust the Nancys to stick up for themselves and our votes, tho.
Got something…
In response to your question,
Rachel Maddow
linked to the BLock the Vote story at Rolling Stone,
and they had links to
StealBackYourVote.org
and novoterleftbehind.net,
where this list resides: basically a website and phone number for each State SoS.
I actually got that far via your Wikipedia link (which indirectly led me to this Wikipedia article). :-)
Now I just need to take the time to follow the various links. The only problem is that since those are all links to official sites, party ID is often not obvious.
The good news is that on the two states that I am most concerned with, VA and PA, both SoS (or more accurately SoC(ommonwealth) in these cases) are appointed rather than elected, and both were appointed by Democratic governors. That greatly reduces my concern (and yours) that the reason that McCain was making a play for PA was to justify his sudden rise in support in PA come election day. With a Dem SoC, he'll have a much harder time pulling off such a theft.
CO would be my next concern, and it's SoS is running for congress this year. He seems to go out of his way to avoid mentioning his party on his website, which this year almost certainly means he's a Republican. Looking at his position on the issues, that seems to be a correct assumption.
But CO, while it is a state that I very much want to win for symbolic reasons, isn't strictly necessary if Obama can hold on to PA, VA, IA, and NM (which seems assured barring theft). If he wins those four states (plus the other Kerry states, all but NH polling +10 or more for Obama) then he wins the election with 277 EVs.
You're damping down my paranoid funk a little bit. (Thanks.) One worry is that even WITH a fair-minded SoS, if the fix is in the machines, it could go on right under their noses. Another worry is that electoral fraud can go on without electronic machines as in Florida 2000. In other words, I'm worried about states that have EITHER one (paperless voting) OR the other (Republican SoS).
The larger the operation required to steal the election, the more likely it will be found out, fail, or meet mass opposition. A landslide turnout is highly desirable this time.
There are many possible alternate futures at this point so I think we should be prepared and have a battle plan for several contingencies.
If they ATTEMPT to steal the vote and FAIL it may be the best thing for the country, as history and the public will accept and admit that 2000 and 2004 were frauds as well, and the system will be fixed so this never happens again. Perhaps the laws and people hired during W's reign could be removed.
Just the idea of having to register to vote is unheard of in most countries. Motor-Voter and other similar laws were a step toward that intl norm, Help America Vo(m)itE was a step away.
Someone described HAVA 2002 as effectively creating a Kathleen Harris for every state. What a horrible mental image.
I was just wondering if one state has an obviously flawed outcome such as Florida 2000, whether another state (preferably a big one such as CA) can refuse to cast its electoral votes at all and thereby throw the election into the House. ?
I expect Obama to exceed the 367 EVs projected on some sites (due to some unpredicted wins and turnout gap) unless the computers take FL/OH/VA/PA/MO/IN etc away from him.
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