* Obama currently is polling at a 5% or more lead in 311EV worth of states (270 needed to win). That means that in order to win, McCain will need to switch at least three states that are currently polling at better than 5% for Obama (See the map at Electoral-Vote.com), and he has to do that without losing a single state that is polling at a closer margin. This late in the game, that big of a lead is very unlikely to switch.
* McCain is making a big play for PA, but I just don't see it switching. Obama has lead decisively in the polls all month, with an average lead of 11.43%. The media claims things are tightening, but only if you cherry pick in the polls. The average lead for this week alone is still 11% in ten polls. Only one poll out of 23 in the last month has showed Obama under 50 percent in PA, and his average in the last week has been 52%.
* PA, VA, and OH are the states most talked about as "swing states", and all three currently have Democratic Governors and Secretaries of State. It's much harder to steal the election if you don't control the election. McCain absolutely must win both PA and OH if he wants to have even a slight chance of winning. Obama can safely lose any one, and most likely he would still win even if he lost two of the three.
* For McCain, FL is an absolute must-win state. If he loses FL, he has no realistic chance of winning. To give you an idea of how crucial FL is if McCain somehow won CA, Obama would still have a 97% chance of winning if he wins FL (assuming all other swing states are unallocated-- see 270towin.com). As far as Obama is concerned, FL would be great to win, but it really doesn't matter if he loses it, so long as he doesn't lose all 8 other competitive states (NV, CO, MT, ND, MO, IN, OH, and NC), plus either PA or VA. If Obama wins even one of those states, he wins regardless of what happens in FL. Of those eight competitive states, three are tied, Obama has a lead under 5% in two and a lead of 6 or 7% in the remaining three (and he's currently ahead in FL by 3% as well). McCain doesn't lead in any of the states that are generally considered competitive, though some states that he was expected to win easily (GA and AZ) have recently moved to within Obama's grasp.
* There is lot's of talk about "the Bradley Effect", but there is absolutely no evidence of such a thing happening this year. In fact, all evidence suggests that Obama is actually doing -better- than the polls suggest. There are a number of reasons that this would be true, but a couple of the main ones is that most pollsters don't poll people who don't have land-lines, a group that largely includes young people who live in cities, college students, etc-- groups that largely support Obama. When those people are polled, Obama's numbers go up dramatically (See this post at FiveThirtyEight.com -- tons of other great stuff on this site also. It's the single best polling site on the net). Pollsters also use a likely voter model that takes into account whether people have voted in previous elections. Obama has registered more new voters this cycle than ever before, so those people are under-represented in the polls.
Ok... That's enough for now... Hopefully you'll be a little less scared now. FYI, here are the biggest things that I'll be watching for on Tuesday are:
1) Will we get a filibuster-proof 60 seat majority in the Senate? Not looking like we'll make it (57-58 is probable, though) but if Obama's coattails are big enough it could happen.
2) Will McCain be able to hold his home state of Arizona? Right now it's looking like he will, but things are a lot closer than he would like.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Reasons for optimism
I talked to my friend Jen today, and she was quite concerned about the possibility of the election being stolen. I sent her a list of several reasons why I didn't think it was likely. Some of it has been mentioned here before, but I thought it contained enough new material that I'd post it here as well.
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Well the election will be stolen by Obama and ACORN. The democrats have and will commit election fraud on a national level through ACORN.
Sure... Those thousand or so false registrations (that ACORN are required by law to turn in, even if they know they are fraudulent and that were clearly noted as apparently fraudulent) will sway the election. Oh, wait. No, they won't.
If you want to post with a username, I'll be happy to resppond and tell you why I don't believe that ACORN is a big deal (at least no bigger deal than the Mark Jacoby case or other similar cases on the Republican side). In the meantime, I'd suggest that you read Obama's response to the fraud allegations made against him.
The flaw in your argument is not so much that McCain has to move into Obama's 5%+ lead in those states...it's that McCain has to hope that the polls are wrong by more than 5%.
I am optimistic that the polls are wrong, but I believe the voting results will show Obama with a greater lead than the polls were predicting.
But with so many registered voters typically not voting (about 40%?) the polls can incorectly predict who will end up showing up to vote. And the difference can be greater than 5%.
King-
Yes, but look who shows up at rallies and who doesn't bother to. Granted, voter turnout and rally turnout are not going to correspond exactly, but the enthusiasm gap is not going to switch directions suddenly. I guess you are worried about a Nixonian "Silent Majority" while Obama supporters are so busy celebrating with bong hits they forget to vote, maybe?
I am only worried about black-box electronic voting states, which may turn out for McCain, and voter suppression in places like Indiana. Voter suppression can be as subtle as having plenty of machines, no lines, early voting in McCainite areas, while Democratic areas have lines over 4 hours long, not enough machines, no early voting, so that voters who can't wait four hours leave and the number of votes that can be recorded per hour is essentially engineered to fall below certain parameters by design.
So I'm worried about losing 3 or 5 states to Diebold, but not an enthusiasm gap. We shall overwhelm!
And the other statistical story is that even if some states do not go as planned (and I would bet some won't) McCain can only win if they ALL don't go as planned...which even the bookies will tell you is near impossible.
Ohio? Maybe. Florida? Maybe. Colorado? Could be. The parlay? Near impossible.
"The flaw in your argument is not so much that McCain has to move into Obama's 5%+ lead in those states...it's that McCain has to hope that the polls are wrong by more than 5%."
Not really. Polling is a much more exact science than the MSM will have you believe. While any given poll may be off, and while there are certainly biases at individual pollsters, etc., the chances that the 13 polls over the last week showing that Obama has an average 11.31% lead in PA (for example) are all wrong is virtually zero.
"But with so many registered voters typically not voting (about 40%?) the polls can incorectly predict who will end up showing up to vote. And the difference can be greater than 5%."
But we do have evidence that about voter turnout. First, in the primaries, voter turnout was at record levels. Second, with the exception of Oregon, early voting is up by huge margins in most states. Those votes haven't actually been counted yet, the evidence suggests that they are mostly Obama votes.
"Ohio? Maybe. Florida? Maybe. Colorado? Could be. The parlay? Near impossible."
Exactly. That was largely the point that I was trying to get across in this post. In fact even if all three of those states that you mentioned (two of which have Republican Secs. of State) were lost or stolen, Obama would still win if all the other states go as expected.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: If Obama loses this election, it will be because it was stolen, and it will be quite obvious what has happened. Short of flipping CA, McCain has virtually no way of winning that doesn't involve winning in multiple states that are showing Obama leads well outside the margin of error in the polling. It's doubtful that he will be able to switch even one of those states, but to switch the three or more that he would need to switch is virtually impossible barring an external event.
I saw the other day about Indiana having 105% voter registration. How is that possible? Don't stories like that lend credence to Republicans who say ACORN is fraudently registering voters?
@MikeB-
You should really give a source and not make your readers search for one, but the only mention of "105%" and "Indiana" I could find was this news item about having a few extra ballots on hand in case every registered voter comes and 5% of them spill Starbucks onto their ballots or attempt to eat them.
Marion County is printing ballots for 105 percent of its registered voters in case a voter makes a mistake or spills coffee on their ballot, White said.
That is probably the source of your rumor.
The US Department of Justice has vigorously investigated allegations of voter fraud since 2003, at the request of the Bush administration. They were able to come up with a few dozen cases for the entire United States in that time. There was heavy pressure to make up fake cases, and you may have heard about the attorneys being illegally dismissed for not making up these false political cases.
On the other hand, we know for a fact of thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions of voters being deprived of their right to vote by purges of voter rolls.
We also know of counties where 100% of voters voted for George Bush, even though the county has equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats, due to black-box electronic voting, which has made US elections the laughingstock of the international democratic community.
Concern about ACORN is as misplaced as wanting to ban, say, coffee mugs because a small number of people are bludgeoned to death with coffee mugs every year, when guns and knives are obviously much more lethal weapons, [rant] or banning roller skates as a means of transportation because they are dangerous while ignoring cars and motorcycles, or the idiots who complain about my earbuds on the train because they can barely hear a tiny noise when the train stops, altho most of the time the train is generating 80 db of noise and people are drunk and talking so loudly I can't hear my audio player (but I don't complain to them). You people make me sick…[/rant]
By the way, McCain has had close connections with ACORN. Take a look for some videos of him praising them at their events. His call to buy up all the failed mortgages is a radical solution, but happens to be just what ACORN calls for. Registering people to vote is not a crime. I filled out a lot of forms with John Dough too when I was in high school and saw someone collecting signatures. Don't be a fool.
anonymous was probably a spam, sporg, borg, splammer, or whatever they are called, in which case it is like arguing with your television, but for a moment I wondered if it could be diogenes, captured by the zombies voting at his local mall and forcibly zombified, thereby losing his identity. He always posted a comment first, just a line or two, and we haven't heard from him for a while… but I think he is resting in a secure undisclosed location until the election is over.
One way to reassure and offer some security to people who are NOT optimistic about an Obama win is to encourage them to invest in a McCain Victory Hedge Fund. It's a DIY project. First, ask yrslf how much mone¥ you can afford to lose. $17? $170? $1700? $17,000, for example. Then, go to Intrade or another reputable online wager site and bet all of this money on a John McCain victory at the polls. In the un/fortunate case McCain wins, cash in your winnings and immediately use your $100/$1000/$10,000/$100,000 to move out of the US and set up your household in a remote mountainous region of Canada/China/Indonesia/New Zealand/Switzerland for the next 4-8 years, growing vegetables and studying the local language and culture at the level of comfort your initial investment was able to provide. It's worth a thought. Invest now in a McCain win and rest easy!
I saw the other day about Indiana having 105% voter registration. How is that possible? Don't stories like that lend credence to Republicans who say ACORN is fraudently registering voters?
Not necessarily. First off, though, it's important to understand what ACORN actually did. Over the last several years, ACORN has registered approximately 1.2 million new voters. By all accounts, the vast majority (99% plus range) of those are legal registrations. Because they pay the people who do the registrations (an hourly wage, not per registration or per Democratic registration), some people will be lazy and just sit at home and write up fake registrations to turn in and collect their paychecks. Because of previous problems of this sort, ACORN pre-screens every registration that they submit, and flag any that appear to be fraudulent. However ACORN is required by law to turn in every registration that they are given, even if they believe that it is fraudulent. The vast majority of the examples that the right wing media likes to site (The Dallas Cowboys, Mickey Mouse, etc) were caught by the screening process and flagged by ACORN prior to submission. If they were trying to pull something sneaky off, would they flag the false submissions? (BTW, anyone who is caught submitting these false registrations is immediately fired and turned over to law enforcement. Voter registration fraud is a felony.)
Next, it's also important to understand the difference between voter registration fraud and voter fraud (and then there's election fraud which is a whole 'nother can of worms). Voter registration fraud is what ACORN stands accused of, but is largely irrelevant in the context of the election. Just because someone submits Mickey Mouse to the voter rolls doesn't mean that Mickey Mouse will show up to try to vote. Vote fraud is when someone attempts to illegally vote. This is a real problem, and has been as long as we've had elections. It has nothing to do with ACORN, however, and has little to do with any one party.
As to your concerns about Indiana, there are many reasons why someone may be registered more than once or why they may have more voters registered than they have in the state. For example, if someone has moved, they may still be on the rolls at their old address. If someone got married and re-registered under their new name, the state may not have caught the change and just listed it as a new registration. However neither of these will actually lead to vote fraud since most likely the person doesn't even know that their registration is duplicated. Motor Voter laws also sometimes lead to these increased registrations since someone who cannot legally vote can end up registered to vote. Just because you are registered doesn't give you the right to vote, though, and most people understand that. Again, vote fraud is a serious felony, and most illegal aliens do their best to avoid being noticed, so the notion that they will risk being deported in order to vote is a bit sketchy.
Vote Fraud is a real concern, but it is nowhere near the concern that Election fraud is. Election Fraud is when you have an organized, coordinated effort to either steal an election or to suppress a certain group from legally voting. An example of election fraud is the flier that was distributed in a minority neighborhood in Indiana (I think) earlier this week, advising that "Due to unprecedented volumes, an extra day has been added for voting. Republicans should vote Nov. 4th, Democrats vote Nov. 5th". Of course no such day was added, but this is a systematic effort to exclude Democrats from the election process. Other examples include Katherine Harris intentionally purging voters from the rolls in FL in 2000, simply because their names were similar to felons (this is well documented by her own memos) and in Ohio in 2004 where predominantly Democratic precincts were given two voting machines while Republican distracts were given 10 or more, in an efort to make the Democrats wait in line for hours to vote. These are examples of VERY real problems that have probably turned the last two elections.
The entire ACORN scandal is a sham. The Republicans know that they are going to lose and are looking for a way to de-legitimize an Obama administration. The scandal itself is a far bigger fraud than anything that ACORN has done. If you haven't read it, please read the Obama campaigns response to the allegations. They do a good job of demonstrating that the accusations themselves may be an attempt at election fraud, and that at least a few elected officials may be guilty of criminal misconduct related to the charges.
And I know that this is way to long already, but one more important note: Voter Registration Fraud is not the sole domain of the left. As noted in my response to Anon above, Righties do it too. They also take it from beyond voter registration fraud straight to election fraud when they actually destroy registrations for anyone who registers as a Democrat. Since these people thought they were registered, this tactic actually prevented them from being able to cast their ballot. Once again, this is a felony, but oddly it does not appear that the Bush Justice Department put as much effort into investigating Sproul as they have into investigating ACORN. Oh, and the company who was busted doing it is being paid by the McCain campaign to register voters again this cycle.
Wow, poll junkie, I appreciate your in-depth report. I'm going to read the Obama response that you have referred to. So can I ask one more question? Wouldn't any candidate respond by saying the same things and why should I believe the Obama campaign's response? (Not asking to get everyone riled up, but asking to try and really understand and believe)
Of course, any campaign will try to spin a negative news story into something more positive. That's why it's really important to look at the story itself and judge it on its merits. In the ACORN case, there really are no merits. ACORN did everything that they legally could do to prevent voter registration fraud, and they are now being punished because of it. The very registrations that they flagged as apparently fraudulent are used as evidence that ACORN is involved in some conspiracy to "destroy the very fabric of Democracy".
It's also important to remember that, contrary to the rumors, Barack Obama has absolutely no current relationship with ACORN. The entire extent of any official relationship between the two is when Obama Represented ACORN, along with the US DOJ, in a case in Illinois in 1995. John McCain spoke at a ACORN dinner in 2006 or 2007, so why isn't he the one accused of fraud?
It's always a good idea to judge any accusations through the lens of what other allegations are being made about a candidate. Throughout this campaign, The right has thrown virtually anything it could think of at Obama without regard for it's merits. They're complaining that Obama hasn't explained his relationship with William Ayers, even though he's explained it many times and it has been examined by every major newspaper in the country. The only problem is that Obama hasn't said what the right wants him to say (specifically that he's a secret Al Qaeda agent seeking to destroy America-- though as bad as McCain's doing, Obama might just win even if he did say that).
They claim that he's a socialist. They claim that he's the most liberal member of the Senate after he voted to support the FISA bill and several other bills that absolutely pissed off the left (including me). Neither his voting record nor his policies are all that liberal.
They're even claiming that he's not a citizen based solely on the fact that the original birth certificate that was posted on his website was a bad scan. Nevermind that multiple news organizations have confirmed that the it's legit... No, remember the mainstream media always lies!
Seriously, the right wing is desperate. They have been throwing any accusation they can at Obama and hoping it will stick. There is nothing to their accusations, but that won't prevent them from continuing to make them.
Finally, think back to the Clinton years. The White Water scandal was first investigated before Clinton was even elected, and the FBI agent in charge of the investigation dismissed the accusations as baseless and purely partisan. Nonetheless, the Republican Party, fueled and funded largely by the right wing media, spent most of eight years and tens of millions of taxpayer dollars investigating the Clintons on the those allegations and anything else that they could find. In the end, the only thing that they could get him on was fooling around with an intern. They are doing exactly the same thing again. They are setting up fake scandals that they can use to prevent him from actually being able to accomplish anything.
Our elected officials should aim to serve the citizens, not just their own agenda, but the Republicans follow a different philosophy. They believe in winning at all costs, and they have no problem screwing the entire nation for the next four years if it will help them win in 2012.
Bless you for posting this. This has been a giant worry for me, especially since 5 counties (at least) in my state have the magic vote-switching machines.
*fingers crossed for election day!*
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