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Only one change today, one that continues the trend toward Obama. Obama’s lead in New Hampshire pops over 5%, thus once again making New Hampshire a “Lean Obama” state, and takes the state out of swing state status. New Summary: McCain Best Case – Obama 281, McCain 257 If everybody gets their leans – 353 Obama, 185 McCain New England is once again fully blue, with New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland thrown in for good measure. We continue to have a situation where John McCain’s best case scenario is still a loss. It is important to point out however that this situation hangs on the status of Florida, which is just BARELY over the 5% threshold in the five poll average. So even a slight variation in Florida polls could put us back into a situation where McCain has a path to victory. A hard path perhaps, but still a path. From 0:42 to about 1:34. Especially around 1:21. (via Talking Points Memo) There is a couple seconds of delay where people seem to not know what to think when Biden chokes up, but watch the response lines of both men and women right after that. Women basically pegged the meter. And the men were not far behind. Gavel just came down. Now it just needs W’s signature.
I am of course kidding with the title. I would honestly be surprised if the situation today lasts through election day without the race tightening again somewhat. However, today’s update is a very significant milestone for Barack Obama. First, canceling each other out exactly, Wisconsin (10 ev) moves from Lean Obama to Weak Obama, and Minnesota (10 ev) moves from Weak Obama to Lean Obama. If Wisconsin had moved and Minnesota had not, this would contribute even more strongly to the result today, but because of Minnesota, it is a wash. However… today the five poll average in Florida, for the very first time, shows an Obama lead of more than 5%. This makes Florida a “Weak Obama” state, and pulls it out of swing state status. So winning Florida is no longer considered in my “Best Case Scenario” for John McCain. And where does that leave us? New Summary: McCain Best Case – Obama 277, McCain 261 If everybody gets their leans – 353 Obama, 185 McCain That’s right. You saw it correctly. As of right now, John McCain’s best case scenario is TO LOSE. He could win EVERY SINGLE SWING STATE… and he would STILL LOSE. Let me just let that sink in. As of right now, John McCain’s best case scenario is TO LOSE. He could win EVERY SINGLE SWING STATE… and he would STILL LOSE. OK. Now perhaps a little reality. I fully expect some of the “Weak Obama” states may end up becoming swing states again before this is done. (Like Minnesota did today for instance.) So this situation will PROBABLY not last. Probably. Assuming that McCain is able to reverse some of his recent fortunes and is really near his bottom and can’t go much lower. On the other hand, if the McCain campaign continues to collapse, we may be on the way to a landslide. Just over one month to go. Time is running out. If McCain managed to reverse this and win it would be an amazing comeback. We’ll see if he can manage it. OK, we just finished watching the debate on Tivo delay… including hitting pause many times in the middle to spend some time reacting. I was spoiler free, and have not yet watched any commentary at all. My thoughts: Gwen Ifill was OK. She stumbled over some of her questions, and they were not always the best questions in the world, but they were OK. Biden was basically Biden. He behaved exactly how I expected him to behave. You could tell at some points though that he was holding himself back a bit. He was a little annoying at times, and sometimes he just recited talking points, but for the most part he gave thoughtful answers that seemed sincere and showed his knowledge and expertise. Palin… her basic mode of operation was one I saw recommended online somewhere earlier in the week. Give a quick one sentence answer to the actual question (if that) and then immediately pivot into standard talking points and prepared speeches. (To be fair, that is standard debate strategy for this kind of thing.) She would then start her talking points, and then circle around and around them, going in circles but not actually going anywhere for a minute or two until time was up. I would challenge anybody to try to diagram some of those sentences. There was often just a long stream of semi-related words and concepts, thrown together into things that could only loosely be called sentences. And more often than not, whatever she was babbling about had absolutely nothing to do with the question. I did not find it painful, but at times we had to pause because we were laughing too hard. It was indeed a mess. Of course, expectations were so incredibly low for her appearance here that the mere fact that she did not spend the whole 90 minutes drooling on herself probably means that folks will say that she had an amazing success today. And indeed, while she once again showed herself to be pretty vapid to anyone who actually DOES follow the issues closely and knows some of the details of the policy questions at hand, will she come off as “sincere” and “likable” and such to the right people such that this performance does not actually hurt the ticket? Maybe. I don’t know. I suspect that many of the people who would be seriously concerned by Palin have already jumped ship. I mean, her press can’t get much worse than the last week, can it? One more thing… for me there was only one moment of the entire debate that was actually memorable. That is when Joe Biden started speaking about how he knew what it was like to not know if a child would survive… and he choked up with emotion for a second… undoubtedly because of what happened to his wife and daughter back in 1972. That was striking. Anyway, end results… the only reason I think this will not be an absolute disaster for the McCain campaign at this moment in time is that most of the reaction to Palin has already happened. The people who will be disturbed by her have already been disturbed and already made up their minds before tonight. The people who don’t mind, well, this won’t change anything. At least I think so right now. If however all of a sudden even MORE people start abandoning McCain than before… then he is completely and totally done here. I was looking forward to doing the liveblogging and popcorn thing again with tonight’s Veep debate, but turns out I have a parent event at Amy’s school I need to go to. So I’m going to have to be watching on Tivo significantly later in the evening. Kind of a bummer. And I’ll have to be careful to avoid spoilers! I’ll of course post thoughts later, but won’t do a tape delayed liveblog or anything. Yesterday while I was at work, I got this email from Brandy:
I am highly allergic to cats, but I still want one. I wish it had decided to stay!
The surge toward Obama continues today, with two more states moving in his direction: Minnesota (10 ev): Obama’s lead goes back above 5%, moving the state from Lean Obama to Weak Obama, and making it no longer a swing state. Nevada (5 ev): The five poll average moves from Lean McCain to Lean Obama. The usual comments… either way, too close to call, don’t read too much into it, blah blah blah. OK, new summary: New Summary: McCain Best Case – McCain 288, Obama 250 If everybody gets their leans – 353 Obama, 185 McCain So, the main thing is once again that the rapid movement of states in the Obama direction continues. The “everybody gets their leans” number continues to be an all time high for Obama. The “Strong+Weak” count for Obama is now 250, which isn’t quite the 261 it was back in July, but it is pretty close. Obama now only needs to flip 20 more electoral votes from “Lean” to “Weak” to be able to win without any swing states at all. Right now in my last five poll averages we have Florida (27 ev) at a 4.6% Obama lead, Virginia (13 ev) at a 4.2% Obama lead and Wisconsin (10 ev) at a 4.6% Obama lead. Any of those three could easily move from “Lean” to “Weak” by going over 5% with even one more poll showing a better than 5% lead. There is still over a month until the election, and much can happen, so I’m not ready to say anything about what things might look like on election eve. To be sure, any of those states could start heading the other direction at any moment… that is probably actually somewhat likely… but at the same time I would not be surprised at all if sometime within the next week we see a situation where McCain’s best case is still a loss.
OK, let me start here with my usual warning, and a little bit bigger and up front than normal. When states move from “Leaning” to one candidate, to “Leaning” to the other candidate… really either way the state is still very very close. Some random comment made by one candidate that gets traction could easily move the state right back where it was. The details of who turns out and who does not on election day could also easily flip the state the other way. “Leaning” states are TOO CLOSE TO CALL. They could flip back the other way very easily. Observers should not get too excited (or upset) when states move toward (or away from) their candidate on this metric. It is actually much more important when a state moves from “Leaning” to “Weak”, taking a state out of the realm of swing states. Having said that… today in my last five poll averages… Florida (27 electoral votes) and Ohio (20 electoral votes) both flip over the line and move from “Leaning McCain” to “Leaning Obama”. This makes a HUGE difference in the “everybody gets their leans” metric. New Summary: McCain Best Case – McCain 298, Obama 240 If everybody gets their leans – 348 Obama, 190 McCain This means that even though just a few weeks ago we were showing a slight McCain win, right now we are looking at Obama winning with a 158 electoral vote margin. That might not quite be a landslide yet, but it is the largest Obama lead so far… by quite a bit. The trends in the last few weeks have not been kind to John McCain. In terms of where Obama stands WITHOUT swing states, he is still not quite as strong as he was in July. But he now has eight states leaning in his direction that he can work on trying to pull further in his direction. If he can pull 30 more electoral votes from “Lean” to “Weak” then he won’t even need ANY swing states to win. Based on the current sizes of the leads in the states, and the number of electoral votes at stake, it looks like the quickest path to this would be pushing hard in Wisconsin and Florida. McCain’s position is now looking very precarious. His attempts to take control in the race seem to have backfired. Will this mean that there will be even more “Hail Mary”‘s coming as he tries increasingly desperately to change the momentum of the race? Maybe so. But I suspect that actually calming down and trying to keep a more steady pace might be the better tactic for him. It may be too late for that though. We are running out of time. |
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