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Recovering from Tuesday

andrew@poll3.com (Andrew) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 19:03:00 +0000

I'll have a full round of post-election analysis soon (though catching up on sleep has become priority A, finally), but in the meantime, I give you this:

After twenty months it's finally over.

and this:

Marist Poll: Matchups for the 2012 Presidential Election

Final Numbers - November 4 (!!!)

andrew@poll3.com (Andrew) — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 16:42:00 +0000

Oh... hi Godot:

You can read these as well as I can by now. The only thing I want to point out: FiveThirtyEight, only 1.9% for McCain? Come on. The problem with FiveThirtyEight's model, as I've said before, is that it doesn't account for a some big screwup--systematic problems with the polls, unusual turnout patterns, etc. If we were certain that the polls accurately reflected the sentiments of the voters in a predictably variable way, then sure, I'd take 1.9%--and this is what their model does. But I'd add a few more percentage points on the chance that the polls are wrong across the board--which they've often been before (see NH, last January). So I'm not ready to break out the champagne just yet.

That said... there will be some on hand tonight. You know, just in case.

Now stop reading and go vote! See you on the other side...

Today's Numbers - November 3

andrew@poll3.com (Andrew) — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 17:06:00 +0000

The "Can it really be?" last day edition:

Maybe if McCain had another week or two, he might have a chance, but even with a bit of state-level tightening there's no way he can overcome Obama's lead by tomorrow unless all the polls are way off. That's what the win percentage numbers are factored around.

Then again, John McCain is speaking on TV in the background, and he's still talking about Joe the Plumber. I have no idea what the hell he is doing. If you want to see why the campaign is where it is, listen to Obama speak and then listen to McCain. Obama's become a stronger, more forceful speaker in the last days of the campaign. Even when he stumbles--like telling a crowd in Jacksonville this morning that "the McCain camp is running a lot of ads here in Ohio"--he manages to recover in a way that makes the audiences love him more. But more than that, he's refined a clear, consistent message, and it works.

McCain, though, is all over the place. His words often don't make sense. He bounces from topic to topic. He has no message--he just throws out attack after attack, without any substance. In the background, he just made some crack in Virginia about Obama being more liberal than "some guy from Vermont who used to call himself a Socialist". I'm pretty sure he was referencing Bernie Sanders, but the silence in the audience was deafening. And what's more--there's no plan, no policy. It's a discomforting mix of platitudes and misleading attacks, all slogans and out-of-context quotes. This is NOT how a successful campaign is run.

I'm feeling fairly confident, but there's still that 10% chance that McCain could pull it off. After watching the campaign, almost two long years, I don't want to think what it would say about our country if McCain won. The fundamentals are ripe for a Democrat to win, and Obama has run an amazing campaign, while John McCain has tripped over himself the whole way. If McCain did put it off, the only explanation I could muster? That it's all about race. I'm not just talking Bradley-Wilder or overt "I ain't voting for no n---er" racism. I'm talking all the questions about Obama's religion, his patriotism, his associations--all these things are really just code for his otherness, his race. The accusations leveled against him over the past year would be laughable if said about a white man, but they work with him because many people are looking for a less overtly racist reason to express the discomfort they feel about a black man being president. Nobody questions Sarah Palin's religion, even though she's openly said that the Iraq war is really a "task from God", and told people they had to support her plan for an oil pipeline because it was "God's will". Nobody questions the patriotism of those who mislead the country into a war that's irreparably damaged our economy and our military, and cost thousands upon thousands of lives. Nobody loses sleep over the associations of Republicans who coddled Saddam Hussein in the 80s and who launched bin Laden's career. Nobody pays much attention to these accusations, which have far more basis in fact and far greater implications for the actual future of the country, but somehow such accusations are credible in Obama's case? I call bullshit.

And if somehow this works tomorrow? All I can say is, God help us. And I'm not even religious.

My Predictions

andrew@poll3.com (Andrew) — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 00:29:00 +0000

At the risk of jinxing everything, here are my predictions:

Reasoning behind my predictions for swing states:

Colorado: McCain hasn't led here since mid-September. High numbers of Hispanics also work in Obama's favor, as do the promising early voting numbers. I've been over the voter rolls in this state personally, and even with the talk of illegal voter purges and the like, there's no evidence that this systematically helps either side. So I'm confident about this one.
Florida: I was worried about Florida, but I think Charlie Crist gave the state to Obama when he issued an executive order extending early voting hours.
Georgia: It would be nice to win Georgia, but I think it's a little out of reach this year unless it's a complete blowout. More likely, Obama to within 4-5% but still loses. The early voting figures, however promising they are, don't show enough of a difference to shake off Georgia's red, red roots.
Indiana: Obama was never supposed to win Indiana, and I don't really think this is the year for it. He'll have very high support in Indianapolis and Gary, but the rest of the state (typical rural Midwest) is going to be heavily McCain. Bush killed Kerry here in 2004, and it might come close but McCain will probably hold on.
Missouri: Like Georgia, another nice idea, but unlikely for Obama. Because he didn't come close in the polls until lately, Obama never set up the kind of ground game that he has in Virginia and Ohio, so we shouldn't expect any extra bump from that. And Missouri has never been part of a winning Obama strategy to begin with, since it's unlikely he would get it without getting Ohio, Pennsylvania, and plenty of other states to put him over the top first. So there (rightly) hasn't been a whole ton of effort expended here, and it'll probably stay with McCain.
Montana: Obama might have had a chance here with some effort, but what's the point? Montana's 3 EV were never going to be critical, and it's not on the way to anywhere else that matters, so campaigning here would've been a waste of time. In a few years it could trend blue on its own (with the help of Brian Schweitzer), but leave that up to the locals.
Nevada: Obama's people came in force during primary season, and never really left. On paper, it's slightly less favorable to him than Colorado, but I think Obama's lead is solid given McCain's lack of effort here recently.
North Carolina: Though I'd initially placed this in the "Maybe Next Year" category, the massive early voting changed my mind. Not only is the voting heavy (as of this morning, 2.57 million early votes; there were 3.55 million TOTAL votes in 2004), but it skews heavily Dem (52D/30R/18I). Blacks are also showing up at disproportionately high levels (26.5% of early voters vs. 22.3% of population), so that's another encouraging sign for Obama. It'll be close, but I think he can pull this off.
North Dakota: See "Montana".
Ohio: This goes against all my instincts--the bitterness of having worked there in 2004 still lingers strongly--but the poll numbers are consistent and the ground game is strong for Obama. This is the call I agonized about most, and I may end up kicking myself for it. (I am, after all, a Red Sox fan, and thus believe that all it takes is one person to f--- it up for everyone else.)
Pennsylvania: Bush lost here in 2000 and 2004, and the conditions have only gotten worse for Republicans since then. The only hope for McCain has been racism, and it's more likely than not that the racism in rural Pennsylvania will be offset by the increased turnout in urban Philly and Pittsburgh. Sorry Republicans, your white whale escapes again.
Virginia: Obama's been working for this one all along, and he's earned it. Add to that changing demographics, recent Dem success in the Governor's office and the Senate, and heavy early voting, and this should be a sure thing.

Disagree? Leave your thoughts in the comments forum below.

Election Night Preview

andrew@poll3.com (Andrew) — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 00:21:00 +0000

As promised, your what-to-watch-for guide to Tuesday night. Page 2 includes a list of states with electoral vote counts and poll closing times, to make it easy for you to follow along at home. Enjoy!

Today's Numbers - November 1

andrew@poll3.com (Andrew) — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 00:42:00 +0000

The definitely-not-endorsed-by-Dick-Cheney edition:

I think at this point, the numbers are the numbers. The national polls have been essentially stable for the past four days now. Obama's win percentage margin has been between +70 and +80 for nearly three weeks. And while it looks like there's been some movement on the electoral vote trackers, the differences we've seen over the past three or four weeks have been mainly single states (generally Indiana and Missouri) flipping back and forth based on one poll or another. Averaging over different trackers makes it look like there's more going on, but that's just the same results filtering through at different times in different ways. This race is very stable right now, and with 20% of the country having already voted (probably more like 30% by the time all the early votes are in), and the first poll closings less than 72 hours away, don't expect much to change between now and then.

What to expect, then: If the polls are right or close to right, Obama wins in a landslide, by more than a hundred electoral votes. If the polls are way off across the board, McCain has a chance. But if the polls are off, I would predict them to be off in Obama's favor, because his massive get-out-the-vote operation looks to bring a lot of new voters to the polls who are often excluded from traditional "Likely Voter" models.

Tomorrow I'll update the numbers if anything changes, but otherwise I'll be here with my what-to-watch-for guide to election night, as well as my own predictions based on polls, demographics, early voting trends, and plucky intuition.

Today's Numbers - October 31

andrew@poll3.com (Andrew) — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 22:34:00 +0000

It's not an October Surprise if you wait til November:

So much for tightening. Happy Halloween everyone. I'll see you tomorrow.

Today's Numbers - October 30

andrew@poll3.com (Andrew) — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 22:57:00 +0000

Of course McCain likes his internal poll numbers, because his external poll numbers still suck:

Four days to go. Deep breaths.

Another day where, even if the national poll trackers don't look great for Obama, the state poll numbers seem to be holding up. I think what we're seeing is in part a product of Obama's efforts to stretch the electoral map.

We can tend to think of the election as being held in three sets of states: the lean-Obama states (NH, MI, WI, MN, IA, NM, OR), the lean-McCain states (NC, IN, MO, GA, MT, ND), and the true swing states(FL, OH, PA, CO, NV, VA). Obama had two possible strategies going in. First, he could attempt to hold down his own states while picking off a couple real swing states. This would mean the election becomes make-or-break in a few select states, probably the big-3 of Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania. This is what Kerry did in 2004, and we know how that strategy worked out.

Alternatively, he could make a play in all states where he had some kind of shot, and force McCain to spread himself thin. This is what Obama did, particularly in the post-convention period, and because of his fundraising advantage he managed to get to where we are now--which is that Obama is ahead by a small margin in a lot of states that were previously red. All he needs is a couple of them to go his way to win, and the odds of that look good. Obama has forced McCain to spend money advertising in red states like Georgia and Missouri, which were thought to be safe even just a few weeks ago. The goal of this strategy is simply to bankrupt McCain and keep him from being competitive in all the states he needs--much as he did against Clinton in the primaries. He doesn't need to win every state he campaigns in to make it worth his while, because McCain has limited resources to spread around.

The interesting trend in the past few days is that while Obama has gained small leads in states where he was previously behind by a couple points (FL, OH, MO, NC), his leads have diminished in a few other key states (PA, VA, CO) that are still part of a solid victory strategy. What appears to be happening here is that Obama's making the choice to diversify--rather than run up large leads in a few key states, he would rather have small leads in a bunch of key states, and so is devoting resources accordingly.

This move is safer in one way and more risky in another than making a play for a few key states in these final days, even after forcing McCain to write off any hope of inroads into Kerry states not called "Pennsylvania". On the safe side, it minimizes the chance that one or two states' screw-ups (bad turnout predictions, voter disenfranchisement, long lines, outright fraud) will jeopardize the entire election. On the risky side, keeping small leads gives McCain a slightly greater chance of winning back a whole bunch of the states at once, if something were to happen to shift the national mood a few points in his favor.

I think that the Obama camp is going with the right strategy, as hard as it to watch. The national polls do seem to be trending in McCain's direction. I said yesterday that much of this change may be base consolidation in red states, given all the red meat he's thrown them lately (accusations of socialism and terrorisms are always redneck crowd pleasers). But even if that's wrong, there are still only four full days left until the election. Maybe if the election were November 15, McCain could come back in a legitimate sense, but four days is simply too short to make up a full 3-5 points in most of these states.

This is especially true in the age of early voting, when large numbers of voters cast their ballots during Obama's peak of the past two weeks. What's more, the trends in early voting by party and demographic suggest that it's Obama's base that has come out early, meaning that the opportunity for McCain to peel away some of his support is even smaller than it would have been in previous years. McCain's whole strategy in the past month has been to run a Bush/Rove-style campaign--throwing every kind of shit at the wall and seeing what sticks--but this isn't what he needs to be doing. This campaign style plays to the base, but as we saw in the 2006 elections, the Republican base is not nearly the size it used to be. What McCain needs right now is independents, and he's unlikely to get them this way. The campaign he's running now makes absolutely no sense--but I'm not complaining.

See? I told you so.

andrew@poll3.com (Andrew) — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 06:07:00 +0000

I was trying to wait for this before publishing the Wednesday numbers, but Nate Silver was too busy palling around with Keith Olbermann. Check out today's state-level poll numbers. This should reassure anyone who's freaking out over the national trackers.

And as a bonus: the latest early voting numbers. Looking good...

Today's Numbers - October 29

andrew@poll3.com (Andrew) — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 03:47:00 +0000

The "somewhat less than $4 million" edition:

Repeat after me: Five days to go. Don't. Panic.

Another hint of tightening in the national trackers, but it's important to note that we've seen no equivalent shift in the state polls. The most likely explanation for this is that undecideds in red states are finally coming home to McCain, much as Democrats came home to Obama over the past few months. What this means for the ultimate results is... nothing. The election is not decided in the red states, or the blue states, but in the swing states. And in the swing states, Obama's doing just fine.

Today's Numbers - October 28

andrew@poll3.com (Andrew) — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 05:41:00 +0000

Because aren't we all, in our own ways, preparing for 2012?:

I'll make this quick, since there's nothing in here that's really concrete. The national trackers took a bit of a dive today, and shook up the confidence of the markets with them (though only to return them to where they were 3 days ago). This could be a bit of a weekend effect (which looks far more ominous than normal this close to election day), or it could be real change. We'll see tomorrow, when Saturday's results drop out of most of the trackers. Til then, not much can be said. Though with 6 days to go, Obama could continue to lose 0.6 points a day (which is highly unlikely) and still win the popular vote by a comfortable margin (3.5 points).

6 days. Wow. Less than 168 hours from now, barring a 2004-Florida-style fiasco, we'll know the next president. Break out the champagne and Xanax.

Just a heads-up: this weekend, I'm hoping to post numbers both days for once (assuming polls are as voluminous as they should be), and to also leave you with a "What to watch for" election night prep guide. Based on the predictions across the country, it will let you know definitively when you can start celebrating (or mourning) your candidate's victory (or defeat). The networks are still paranoid about declaring a winner too early after 2000, but using the wonders of mathematics, I'll show you what constitutes a win and a loss for each candidate. Stay tuned.

Voter Deception

andrew@poll3.com (Andrew) — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 15:31:00 +0000

One of campaign season's most notorious and enduring tricks has reared its head, Putin-like, in Virginia: Phony flier says Virginians vote on different days. This is one of the oldest tricks in the book, yet somehow people still fall for it. It's closely related to the outstanding-warrants flier scam that we've already seen in the past few weeks, in that its goal is to trick potential Democratic voters into staying home on election day. It seems like these particular scams always show up somewhere in every election cycle. When I was campaigning in Ohio back in 2004, we noticed that somebody was spreading rumors amongst the student population that voter registration would lead to jury duty (which is true in some states, but not in Ohio at that time), and that it was illegal for students to register at their college address (absolutely untrue).

Let's hope people have smartened up a bit over the last four years. I must give Virginia credit, though; last year, the legislature passed a law making it a class-A misdemeanor to purposefully mislead a voter. Such a law specifically combats campaigns like these. A similar bill was introduced nationally last year but so far it hasn't been put to a vote.

Today's Numbers - October 27

andrew@poll3.com (Andrew) — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 05:01:00 +0000

Even Ted Stevens is still a safer bet than McCain:

Mondays are a wonderful time around here. As you can see, damn near everyone updated their numbers today. We've seen the first new maps in a week from Election Projection, Chris Cillizza, Chuck Todd, and Steve Lombardo (of LCG--Lombardo Consulting Group). And with these updates comes a continued uptick in Obama's lead, reflecting the small but steady improvement in the state polls over the past week.

The national polls actually ticked down a little for Obama compared to the past couple days, but it remains to be seen whether this is a sampling issue or actual change. I'm guessing it's sampling--after all, today's tracking poll releases include predominantly weekend respondents, who can differ systematically from respondents who can be reached during the week. Many pollsters believe that these differences can be compensated for by weighting respondents according to demographics, but this doesn't entirely solve the problem; as we see in data on the differences between cell-only respondents and landline respondents, basic lifestyle choices can have effects that are not properly accounted for by demographic weightings. Comparing those who are home to answer the phone on weekends with those who are not, we would imagine the latter group to have less traditional jobs, be located in more socially-active areas--they could even be out volunteering on a campaign!--and all these factors could lead to the weekend samples being less favorable to Obama for reasons that cannot be dealt with simply by weighting.

As a quick semi-scientific analysis, look at the Rasmussen numbers over the past few months Looking at the Sunday to Monday change in the last 10 weeks (since the start of Convention season), we see that Obama lost ground to McCain in 5 of those instances, stayed even in 3, and improved in only 2. The sample size is not big enough to draw any definitive conclusions, but it's more likely than not that weekend polling does have an effect.

And on the win prediction front, Obama continues to creep up slightly, but McCain's floor hasn't moved much since I mentioned it two days ago (down about a point on average). There's not much hope for a McCain comeback at this point, especially with early voting under way, heavy, and looking to favor Obama's demographics. The remaining hopes for McCain are, as a I said before, resting on some kind of screwup. But with courts shooting down efforts to illegally remove voters from the rolls, those hopes are looking pretty slim at this point. (Full disclosure: I was involved in the data work for that lawsuit in Colorado.)

So with that, sitting here near two in the morning, I'll leave you with a parting thought:

OMFG! ONE WEEK TO GO! And a good thing, too, because these last two years have probably taken ten off my lifespan.

Today's Numbers - October 25

andrew@poll3.com (Andrew) — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 22:47:00 +0000

Watch out, or I might decide to go rogue:

Sorry for the poor image quality on the numbers--on the road, I'm forced to use MS Paint instead of my usual Photoshop, so.

I think we've figured out how far the markets can go. Right now McCain is given a 13-15% chance of pulling this off, which hasn't changed significantly in the past five days--despite a small but real increase for Obama in the poll numbers. I think what we're seeing here is that the markets have decided that McCain realistically cannot pull this off by normal means, but there is a chance that some screwup will give it to him. That screwup could be a massive voter disenfranchisement (for which efforts are underway, but struggling), outright fraud in some key states (hello, Diebold!), a complete failure of the Obama turnout operation, or a massive, systematic failure of polls to accurately gauge public opinion. But what McCain won't do is come back in any legitimate sense. So while this thing's not quite over, it's certainly looking about as over as it's going to get before November 4.

See you monday.

Today's Numbers - October 23

andrew@poll3.com (Andrew) — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 04:53:00 +0000

Here John, have another rat:

Not much analysis today (was grading midterms all evening), but suffice it to say that life is looking up for Obama. The McCain camp is imploding. My call? Too late for a strategic comeback at this point. All he can do is hope for either a bin Laden video or that the polls are all wrong--and I'm not sure even those would save him. Surprisingly, I'm finally starting to agree with Nate Silver's numbers.

Traveling tomorrow, so either a late update or else a Saturday update. Stay tuned.

Today's Numbers - October 22

andrew@poll3.com (Andrew) — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 22:44:00 +0000

This is getting pretty repetitive:

Things are pretty flat in the polls again today, so the win percentage numbers keep moving up incrementally. (The polls were actually all over the place--for example, we know that Obama's lead is somewhere between one and fourteen points, amusingly--but they averaged out to about the same place they were yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that...)

I'm beginning to repeat myself, but time is running out for McCain, and he's obviously just spinning his wheels right now. The NYT reported today that McCain's basically going all in with Pennsylvania. In my mind, a smart move, but also a sign of how desperate things are. The electoral map is this right now: Iowa and New Mexico are solid pickups for Obama from 2004. That brings Obama to 264 EV. Add Colorado or Virginia to the mix (273 / 277 EV), and it's game over. However, if PA flips to McCain, Obama can have both VA and CO and still lose (266 EV). McCain's calculation is that he's got a better chance of taking PA than he does of holding BOTH VA and CO, and I think he's right. McCain's only strategy at this point is stoking up fears of Obama's supposed -isms: socialism, terrorism, anti-americanism, etc. That won't fly in Colorado, at least not as well as it might in rural Pennsylvania. And I think Pfotenhauer blew McCain's last hopes of keeping Virginia. (The Daily Show link is a great clip to watch regardless.)

McCain's odds of taking PA? Not good. But it's about all he's got right now. And if Obama manages to also take any of Nevada, Missouri, Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio, West Virginia, Florida, or Georgia, or North Dakota & Montana together? Game over.

Cross-Promotion

andrew@poll3.com (Andrew) — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 19:50:00 +0000

I was thinking of setting up a "Recommended Reading" list of links on the right of the page (by the links to poll trackers / campaign maps / etc.) to interesting political blogs. So if you write a blog that you'd like me to link to, send me an email (andrew [at] poll3.com) and if I like what I see I'll put a link up. All I ask in return is that you do the same. Thanks!

P2004SD - Post-2004 Stress Disorder?

andrew@poll3.com (Andrew) — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 19:39:00 +0000

It's a solid candidate for the DSM-V:

Democrats' Gloom Deepens

This is what I get for not going to therapy like a good New York liberal should. I would quote some Kurt Cobain lyrics about paranoia right now, but I think that would be overplaying my hand a bit, don't you?

Today's Numbers - October 21

andrew@poll3.com (Andrew) — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 03:30:00 +0000

A day without movement is a day without sunshine--for McCain:

(the obvious melanoma jokes aside...)

So almost no movement in the EV numbers--almost all the movement in the lower EV number is a product of Pollster switching Florida to toss-up status, sapping 27 EVs from Obama in their calculation because of a string of tight polling. Otherwise, no movement there. Despite the GWU/Battleground figure I had a mini-freakout about earlier, most of the popular vote measures actually went up today, owing to a few very nice numbers for Obama in some non-tracking polls released today. (Our number goes down because the Iowa markets--perhaps the reason I've been popping antacids every day lately--jumped around again today and settled on a far more reasonable number than the +11 they were at yesterday.)

Which leaves us with the win percentage numbers--which, it's easy to see, are at an all-time high. Two weeks until election day, not counting the early voting already going on (and which the Democrats seem to be benefiting from), and time is running out for Team McCain. The bump in the popular vote polls today seem to suggest that the tightening we've seen over the past week has flattened out or may even be reversing. I think the Wright issue is almost inevitable at this point--I suppose McCain may still try to preserve what's left of his legacy by not bring it up directly, but others will on their behalf--but it's old news to pretty much everyone and is likely to turn off just as many people as it turns on.

So this is why the win percentage numbers are high and getting higher--what more can McCain do? Since his campaign is obviously directionless and undisciplined, in start contrast to Obama's (Biden's relapsed foot-in-mouth disease excluded), and with little time, money, or credibility to recover on the merits, he's down to hoping for either a) the polls to be way, way off, or b) the previously-mentioned "external contingency" to occur. The odds of the latter happening are decreasing by the day, which leaves McCain with a surprisingly typical Republican position to rest his hat on: praying that science might be wrong.

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Also: Note that I've finally updated the links on the right-hand-side of the page to include the new poll trackers I've added since I originally set up this page, so if you want to know where I get this data, it's all over there.

Tracking Polls

andrew@poll3.com (Andrew) — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 15:37:00 +0000

I have to give a nod to FiveThirtyEight today for putting out a great tracking poll primer which gives a good overview of all the major tracking polls. Nate's obviously got a lot more time to work on this stuff than I do, and in moments like this it pays off.

One Point?

andrew@poll3.com (Andrew) — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 14:10:00 +0000

That's what the GWU/Battleground tracker says today. An outlier, of course, but it still worth a couple heart palpitations.

Today's Numbers - October 20

andrew@poll3.com (Andrew) — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 01:14:00 +0000

15 days to go to the election, but I won't make you wait that long:

We see a continuation of the incremental tightening I discussed earlier in these numbers. Nate Silver isn't too worried and says that it's hard to imagine that McCain can make up that kind of ground in two weeks without some "external contingency" shaking up the race. I'm not so certain. I agree that it's hard to make up a half point a day, but that's presuming we really are in a 7-point race. What worries me is that maybe the average poll is getting it wrong, that somehow all these new voters for Obama will act like new voters in other elections and not actually show up in anywhere near the prophecied numbers, or that conversely lots more Republicans will turn out (motivated by rantings about terrorists and socialists--or for that matter, black people--in the white house) than the polls predict. Maybe the race is closer to the 4-point race claimed by Rasmussen and GWU/Battleground in their tracking polls today, or even the 2-point race AP-Yahoo found among adults in a poll last week. In that case, two weeks is a much longer time than it is with a 7-point lead. I don't mean to be all doom-and-gloom about it, but having worked on the 2004 campaign in OH, PA, and NH, I know what it's like to watch everything you worked so hard for fall apart, and I can't stand to see that happen again.

On a totally different note:

The interesting story of the next few days may be this. Obama is leaving the campaign trail to fly to Hawaii and be with his ailing grandmother. The question is, what does John McCain do? He can stay on the trail and risk looking vulgar (taking advantage of Obama's absence while Obama shows his family cred), or he can lay low and give up 2-3 days out of 15 during which he might do something to get back in this. It looks like a lose-lose for McCain, but it will be interesting to see how he decides to handle things.

And finally: Wright alert. If McCain decides to use this while Obama's away, it could be suicidal, especially since Joe Biden would never let it slide--and a Biden tirade in Obama's absence would be major. As TO says, get your popcorn ready.

A Tightening Race

andrew@poll3.com (Andrew) — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 17:40:00 +0000

New numbers to come this evening, but right now I want everybody to go look at two things:

Pollster's estimate of the popular vote trend. (Of all the sites tracking popular vote numbers, I tend to trust Pollster's the most, since they include every scientific poll available, use regressions to estimate the over-time trends [as opposed to simple averages], and their model responds accurately to change in the national mood.)
Sean Quinn's warning about the dangers of the complacency that can come from favorable polls.

This race has tightened up over the past week--there's no denying that now. And there are still 15 days left until the election, which is plenty of time for things to close up even more. So to all the Obama supporters out there: Don't get cocky. There's plenty of work left to be done. The campaign still needs volunteers. They still need money, even despite yesterday's announcement--much of that money has already been spent just on building and keeping the lead Obama has now, and it will take more to keep it going through election day. And for those of you who live in swing states or have friends there--make sure nobody you know decides to stay home on November 4th. There's no excuse for it, unless they've already voted early. Otherwise, keep pestering, and if necessary, show up on their door and drag them to the polling place. They'll thank you come January.

Two Stories

andrew@poll3.com (Andrew) — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 00:56:00 +0000

There were two big stories today that everyone has probably heard by now. Early this morning, the Obama campaign announced a HUGE fundraising haul in September of over $150 million. A few hours later, Colin Powell endorsed Obama on Meet the Press. Let's look at the potential impact of each of these in turn.

To put the $150 million in perspective, the previous one-month fundraising record--set by Obama in August--was $66 million. With his total fundraising exceeding $600 million, Politico notes that he's on track to surpass the combined fundraising of Bush and Kerry in 2004. (This entry will probably refer to Politico more than usual, since I'm watching the Sox game on DVR and don't want to spoil it by accidentally seeing a score report on a mainstream news website.) This is what has allowed Obama to dramatically outspend McCain on advertising, including a half-hour of airtime on CBS and NBC on October 29th.

So the actual haul is nothing but good news for Obama. But my question is, what impact will the announcement of this amount have? There are three perspectives on this. It could have a positive effect, since it could add to Obama's perceived inevitably and serve to further discourage McCain supporters. It could have no effect, since the vast majority of Americans don't care about campaign financing. (And as a certain political type I know pointed out to me tonight, the vast majority of people also have no real idea how the campaign finance system works anyway.) My take, though, is that there's potential for this story to hurt Obama. For one, it allows McCain to bring up the argument again that Obama lied by saying he would take public financing and then backing out of it. And as far as negative attacks go, that may be the most substance-based McCain has going for him, so he may be able to spin it effectively. What's more, the people who are still undecided right now may be the same people who are most likely to react negatively to the announcement. You could imagine that the people who are still uncommitted are the lesser-of-evils types who generally dislike politicians and are unlikely to be fans of large amounts of money in politics. This announcement could turn them away from Obama. While this is admittedly speculative, there is some evidence for this. Looking at the Harris poll linked to above, the people who are most likely to respond negatively to a generic candidate opting-out of public financing are independents--who are also the most likely to still be undecided.

I can't say whether this will make much of a difference, but I think the worry about it was what caused the campaign to announce that number early on a Sunday morning when the main news story was inevitably the potential Powell announcement. A smart move, I think, since the money story gets buried under the Powell story, and because it's too late for Sunday's papers it gets stale by the time Monday rolls around. Any potential damage is largely blunted by the timing, while the people it might help with (the overinformed partisan types--which I suspect includes most of us) will hear about it regardless.

As far as the Powell announcement goes, the prevailing wisdom ranges from "so what?" to modestly good news for Obama. Endorsements typically don't change any minds directly, but (a) Colin Powell is not a normal endorser, with high favorability ratings from both Republicans and Democrats, and (b) in the big picture sense, it wins a good news cycle or two for Obama, takes McCain out of the headlines for that time (taking away his chances to make news), and may help to shore up Obama's foreign policy credentials. My take is that it will probably not have a perceivable impact on the polling numbers, but what it will do is shore up some of the weak Obama supporters (by allaying their doubts about him) while decreasing the likelihood of some weak McCain supporters turning out. So while I don't think it'll affect the polls, I'd bet it's worth half a point or so on election day--and if you don't think that's a lot, remember Florida in 2000.

Today's Numbers - October 18

andrew@poll3.com (Andrew) — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 20:49:00 +0000

McCain's slow creeping continues, and I mean in the polls:

A little movement away from Obama's highs of a few days ago, but nothing to panic about yet--just more to stay vigilant. The only number showing a substantial move is the top EV number, and that's just a product of an updated Chris Cillizza number; the Washington Post has three different dates for the same numbers on their site--one on the generic campaign map, one on their estimated campaign map, and one on Cillizza's blog--and I've finally settled on checking Cillizza's blog every day because the numbers on the maps aren't updated regularly. (They also have a map based on RCP data, but I don't include that because it borrows the state-level estimates, so it would essentially be double-weighting RCP, and it is also undated.)

Other than that, not much movement except for the slight inching toward McCain that I mentioned yesterday. It's not being reflected in the EV numbers just yet, but we see the popular vote totals going down a bit (even more if you discount Iowa's number somehow going up to an incredulous 12.9% margin), and the win percentage forecasts are just slightly off their highs. As I said before, no need for panic, but it's just a reminder of the need for Obama supporters to stay vigilant. McCain seems to have stopped the bleeding at this point, by tempering the personal attacks and instead returning to the classic republican tactics of attacking on taxes and emphasizing Obama's "liberal" record. So it's time to stop planning for blowout victory parties and keeping focusing on the race as it is: one wherein Obama has a respectable lead of probably 5 points nationally, but where McCain is far from defeated. Complacency now can make 5 points dry up pretty quickly by November 4.

Since the pattern of little weekend movement has been clear for the past couple weeks, there probably won't be a numbers update tomorrow unless something major happens in the polls. I might post a bit more commentary if anything exciting happens between now and then (Powell endorsement anyone?), but otherwise I'll see you Monday.