Two states have moved to the McCain column on my weighted aggregates: Ohio, where polling for McCain remains surprisingly strong, and West Virginia, where a 50-42 result from Public Policy Polling puts the state back where it should probably have been all along. Obama’s lead in North Dakota is largely based on what was probably a rogue poll. For all that, Obama retains leads of over 5 per cent in enough states to win the election (note that the table below will be updated as new polls become available, so the aforementioned might be out of date at the time you read this).
| Obama | McCain | Sample | D-EV | R-EV | |
| Michigan | 56.0 | 37.0 | 3215 | 17 | |
| Maine | 54.8 | 38.9 | 2185 | 4 | |
| Washington | 55.1 | 40.5 | 2149 | 11 | |
| Iowa | 54.0 | 39.7 | 1160 | 7 | |
| Minnesota | 53.4 | 40.5 | 3177 | 10 | |
| Wisconsin | 52.2 | 39.5 | 3567 | 10 | |
| Pennsylvania | 52.7 | 40.3 | 3604 | 21 | |
| New Hampshire | 53.3 | 42.1 | 3360 | 4 | |
| Ohio | 51.8 | 40.8 | 3024 | 20 | |
| Virginia | 51.5 | 43.1 | 3324 | 13 | |
| New Mexico | 50.1 | 42.0 | 2427 | 5 | |
| Colorado | 51.9 | 45.7 | 3038 | 9 | |
| North Carolina | 50.7 | 45.5 | 4769 | 15 | |
| Nevada | 49.5 | 45.4 | 3221 | 5 | |
| Indiana | 48.8 | 45.0 | 3128 | 11 | |
| Missouri | 49.2 | 45.4 | 3063 | 11 | |
| North Dakota | 45.8 | 43.6 | 1206 | 3 | |
| Florida | 46.6 | 45.9 | 3420 | 27 | |
| Montana | 45.5 | 47.5 | 2003 | 3 | |
| Georgia | 45.6 | 49.5 | 3533 | 15 | |
| West Virginia | 43.0 | 50.0 | 3022 | 5 | |
| Others | - | - | - | 175 | 137 |
| RCP/Total | 50.2 | 42.8 | - | 378 | 160 |
925 Comments
William,
I think your EV estimate is sound. However, can you tell me on which polls you base your state-by-state calculations?
RealClearPolitics will not reveal which polls are included in calculations. For example, I don’t think Reserve2000 polls are included, even though other websites like 538 and princeton election consortium include R2K.
Four days and 5 electoral seats, lol.
I think FL, NC, MO, ND and VA will all swing back to McCain between now and November 4. Still not enough for McCain to win but I expect it will be closer than the current prediction.
Wiliam
I’m really struggling to understand a model based on RCP which gives a 0.5% margin in VA when it’s an 8.1% average on RCP and the most recent polls are 10% and 6% to Obama.
Palin’s bit on SNL:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/18/sarah-palin-on-snl-with-t_n_135887.html
William – check RCP re Virginia and Ohio. Different figures on my look?
Julian, I include all state polls that appear on Pollster.com. Each poll is weighted according to its sample, and the results are adjusted according to the change in the RCP aggregate since the last date of the polling period. Since I’m only using RCP to measure changes over time, the particular nature of its methodology shouldn’t matter much.
With good reason, Diogenes – I made a data entry error on one of the polls. I’ve now got Obama 4.1 per cent ahead.
Juliem,
Seems the Democrats know a thing or two about being rockspiders.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-kass-bd-plumberoct19,0,946674.column
OZ,
I’ve lived in MO, and notwithstanding the 100K (St. Louis) and 75K (Kansas City) turnouts today, it’s quite a rednecky state. It’s hard to fathom why Obama is competitive there, unless it’s simply because he’s a Senator from bordering state. Midwest pride or something. However, that doesn’t seem to have helped Obama in Indiana on eastern border of Ill.
Florida has hit highest unemployment level in August (6.5%) since the mid-90’s, and it’s Jewish community is not overly smitten with Gov. Palin, but it has a Repub. Governor and the Cuban refugee Republican bloc.
VA has had considerable influx of Dem. regos in its northern dormitory belt for D.C. (although that’s NOT the real Virginia mind), and it has a Dem. Governor.
I’ll be shocked if Obama wins NC or ND.
GG
What do you think Colin Powell will do tonight? Endorse Obama or McCain or abstain. An Obama endorsement would dominate the news cycle for a few days and it would start talk of Powell being in Obama’s Cabinet. I bet Powell is getting plenty of advice from his Repug friends.
Wow! I only just realised Kansas City is not in Kansas, it’s in Missouri. Did it move or something?
Diogenes,
It’s a better question for you.
Afterall, you are the one who has provided character advice and job performance references for Powell previously. Not about to demonstrate some Christian forgiveness are we?
William @ 6: “Since I’m only using RCP to measure changes over time, the particular nature of its methodology shouldn’t matter much.”
Sorry, William, but could you be more specific as to why this would be the case? I’m not questioning the validity of your statement—just most interested to learn more how this stats stuff works.
Many thanks in advance.
I’ve had a ferret around for Ohio and located a poll I’d missed which has put Obama 0.2 per cent ahead. The reason I have McCain doing better than the others is that Pollster are including a Zogby internet poll, and I gather the others don’t count internet polls.
Kansas City straddles the Kansas-Missouri border. So it’s in both states.
An example, Julian: On October 14, RCP had Obama 50.2 and McCain 42.0, whereas today it’s 49.6 (down 0.6) and 43.1 (up 1.1). A Rasmussen poll in Ohio on October 14 had the result at 49-49, so for purposes of my calculation that’s been adjusted to Obama 48.4 (down 0.6) and McCain 50.1 (up 1.1). If RCP was biased 2 per cent in McCain’s favour on October 14, it presumably remains so today – that doesn’t affect the change over that time, which would probably be very similar if I used any of the other aggregates.
Kakuru,
Yep, but by far the major population and CBD are in MO. Compares roughly with North Sydney Council area and Sydney City Council area.
Excellent point GG.
As you know, I hate Powell. On a personal level, I’d want to tell him where to shove his endorsement until he apologised for his role in starting the Iraq War.
“I was wrong, I was fooled, I should have questioned more, I was a patsy” that sort of thing.
Christian forgiveness is only extended when it’s asked for and he hasn’t asked for forgiveness yet.
But on a political and social level, it would help unite the country and be a powerful message if Obama and Powell help erase the past. So if Powell extends the hand, Obama should take it.
GG @ 8,
Would expect no less from someone who is at best a fence sitter, at worst hangs out on the other end of the political spectrum.
Unlike some though, I feel you are fully entitled to your view, just happens that (1) I don’t happen to share them and (2) you are in the minority.
It is a whole heck of a lot easier to forgive you your views when I am in the majority
……
William, that’s very clear and helpful.
Sorry, one more question. Is it known whether RCP is including the exact SAME polls every week or cherry picking? Nate Silver @ 538 attempted to get an answer to this question from the RCP bloke a few weeks ago with no success.
jj @ 9, Florida will be delivered to Obama through the Jews and the Cubans, esp. the Cubans. They are packing out (registered Republicans mind you) Obama rallies to the tune of several thousandsat a time because Obama will change policies vis a vis Cuba and that will enable them to help their long suffering relatives still in Havana et. al. with money and other aid.
Ah yes JulieM, you have me tagged correctly as “an extreme centre of the road moderate”. I well understand that you do not share such views given the bilious nature of your pro-Obama commentary.
The urge to go along with the “Tyranny of the majority” is not something that particularly excites me.
Julian, I personally am confident that RCP isn’t “cherry picking”, but I can’t give you any hard details.
Be nice, GG.
Juliem,
Thanks for that Fla. update. Cubans have been the most Repub. Hispanic bloc, and I’d no idea Obama was doing better with them. Where did you read that?
BTW, my only nephew is a frosh at Fla. State in Tallahassee, and he’s voting McCain like his parents.
What about the bilious nature of the anti-Obama commentary?
William,
You’ve been inordinately patient with my queries. Muchas Gracias.
jj @ 24.
It was some several weeks ago and I posted the link and a few details (the URL to link onto provided full details. It was in a previous thread here amongst the various US ones on PB. I will look for and see if I can find the original source OR that post.
I wasn’t aware Obama had a particular pro-exile stance with the Cubans?
Anything that falls short of ramming more sanctions on Cuba is not going to get the Cuban vote in Florida.
They do seem to be doing some cherry picking William. I’ve seen them drop polls from their national average calculations from one day to the next, with no particular pattern however.
jjulian
what is a frosh
GG,
I can afford to be generous in spirit when the RCP no swing states map shows Obama with 364 EV’s
…..
If you are looking for someone to verbally joust with, hang your hat somewhere else
.
Cheers
Oz, not you too? Sheeessshhh … either PB’ers are not keeping up with posts and/or some of us have short memories …. moment, I will have to do a searching job …..
Gusface.
Apology that I have used American jargon: A Frosh=Freshman=First year at university.
Dario,
I dug back into Nate Silver’s post at 538.com. on RCP. It’s from 2 October:
“I just concluded a long, and understandably fairly contentious phone conversation with John McIntyre of Real Clear Politics.
John strongly disputes the notion that he is cherry-picking polls to achieve a particular partisan result (pro-GOP or otherwise).
It is clear to me that there is substantial subjectivity in how RCP selects the polls to include in its averages. RCP does not publish an FAQ, or any other set of standards. Nor, in my conversation with John, was he willing to articulate one. In my view, the fact that RCP does not disclose a set of standards means ipso facto that they are making judgment calls — that there is some subjectivity involved — in how their polls are selected.
However, it does not necessarily follow that these judgment calls reflect any deliberate partisan leaning, i.e. any “bias”. That is a much stronger accusation, and it is the one that John objects to.”
Re 32,
Details of the link(s) between Cuban Americans in south Florida and the Obama campaign
One thing McCain and Palin beat Obama and Biden on is having a sense of humour. McCains speech at the Smith dinner was fantastic and Palin shows she is a good sport who can take a laugh.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/18/sarah-palin-on-snl-with-t_n_135887.html
To be honest I’m more worried at how far SNL has fallen than any of this election stuff. What a shambles.
Interesting that there are some Republican Cubans swinging his way, but the best way the Huff Post could describe them was as a “roomful” so I don’t think it’s that significant.
The really anti-Castro Cubans who are the wealthiest and most influential are going to vote for whoever maintains the blockade or toughens sanctions. That appears to be McCain.
37 – but Tina Fey still did come across as a better candidate
How far they’ve fallen? Getting record ratings aren’t they?
Yeah, that’s what I thought. I’ve definitely seen them lop 3 or more polls off from one day to the next, and when I tried to work out a pattern (either age of poll, or sample size, or party affiliation, or bias) I couldn’t find one. Just a bit perplexing really.
Dario – I mean in terms of quality, not ratings. I’ve seen a few skits from SNL over the past few months and they were deplorable. Almost Rove-esque.
Suit yourself Oz
…….
Dario,
Perplexing is the right word. I’m attempting to significantly increase my comprehension of polling aggregation (from a low base) with the valuable insights of William, Possum, Sam Wang, Nate Silver etc.., but RCP is no help.
DIO (36)
Unfortunately it will be no laughing matter if McCain and Palin manage to fluke their way into the Whitehouse. They are dangerous people – in the same way that George Bush has proven to be – and the sooner they are rejected by the American people the better. .
Juliem,
Good on ya’ for going to the trouble to find the Cuban article from Huffpost. That roomful should make an impact:
“To leave a roomful of Republicans who are now supporting Obama is, I think, very significant; many of them are community leaders who can influence many others.”
Darn
It’ll be freakin’ hilarious if McCain-Palin get into the White House for a good few months, probably right up ’til when McCain nukes Eye-Ran.
Not sure about that. They still show old SNL on Foxtel, and TBH the standard hasn’t really changed all that much these days.
Something I found out yesterday which I didn’t know was that US pollsters put weighting on their polls by party registration. I dont know whether this makes them more or less biased and for who but it is very interesting.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/election_20082/2008_presidential_election/new_rasmussen_reports_partisan_weighting_targets_39_7_democrat_33_0_republican
The other major demographic in Florida (aside from the Hispanic Cuban vote), the Jewish vote, checking in with the progress of “The Great Schlep” tonight ……
Ok, here is a new one on me, I didn’t know this before tonight. So I’m gathering that none of you out there probably knew this either ….
I could not resist. This one is from votefromabroad.org -
Is John McCain a Maverick?
No! says Terrellita Maverick, a descendant of Samuel Augustus Maverick, who went to Texas in the 1800s and became famous for not branding his cattle, which led to unbranded cattle being called “mavericks.” The Maverick family has been active in progressive politics for generations, including Fontaine Maury Maverick, who was a congressman and his son, a firebrand lawyer who defended draft resisters. The Mavericks object strenuously to McCain’s being labeled a maverick, saying: “He’s a Republican. He’s branded.” Thanks to Debbie Scherrer for the pointer.
More polls -
Obama Continues to Lead in the National Polls
With seven new national polls released yesterday, Barack Obama continues to lead John McCain in all of them, with the average lead being 6.3%
– Battleground (Obama +4)
– Diageo (Obama +10)
– Gallup expanded (Obama +6)
– IBD (Obama +5)
– Rasmussen (Obama +4)
– Research 2000 (Obama +10)
– Zogby (Obama +5)
Fox would spin that as “Obama lead shrinks” =P
Conventional wisdom would say there will be a narrowing, to borrow a scenario from OZ 2007. Can’t see it being enough for MCain unless something very dramatic happens. The Princeton Election Consortium has some interesting comment and analysis of the polls.
I reckon the Democrats will win the contest to get the vote out this time.
There have really only ever been three Mavericks, Bart, Beau and Brett. I wonder how many people here remember them. I’m showing my age.
$150m for Obama in September, sheesh
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1008/A_huge_September_150_million_for_Obama.html
So, will Powell endorse Obama or not?
We’ll find out in a few hours, when MEET THE PRESS airs in the U.S.
Also: The Houston Chronicle today endorses Obama for President, the first time in 40 years they have supported a Democrat!
I provide the below quote only for the interesting term ‘ethically challenged’.
When is Meet the Press, in our time…
Would there be a stream/download?
Heh, showing my youth, but the only maverick named Bart I know if from the Simpsons..
“Meet the Press” is seen on the NBC Television Network from 9-10 a.m. ET in most markets. In Washington D.C. and New York City, the broadcast is seen from 10:30-11:30 a.m. ET.
Not sure what that equals for us
I’m pretty sure it shown on Ch 7 at around 3.30am Monday Morning according to Yahoo 7.
There’s been quite a sharp move McCain’s way on the RCP average, which has moved North Dakota to McCain on my aggregates. However, I’ve decided I’m no longer going to include the Zogby internet polls, which has boosted Obama’s figure for Ohio.
Or there is the Vodcast information here.
http://www.vodcasts.tv/vodcast/1745/NBC_Meet_the_Press
Fox is reporting that Powell has endorsed Obama.
#52 — Is John McCain a Maverick?
I like what Mikey Robbins said on GNW last Tuesday. Someone who keeps saying their a
Maverick all the time, Is a bit of a Dickhead Maverick…
well, as everyone else is doing it..
I, former President of the Peoples Republic of China, Chairman of the Communist party of China and all-round brutal-dictator, endorse Barack Obama for President of the United States of America.
and I endorse me too, as well, whatever the correct grammar is.
UK Independent on Po-el out mavericking the maverick…
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/race-for-whitehouse/colin-powell-endorses-obama-966599.html
Gary Bruce says -
“There have really only ever been three Mavericks, Bart, Beau and Brett. I wonder how many people here remember them. I’m showing my age.”
James Garner as Bret Maverick,
Jack Kelly as Bart Maverick
Roger Moore as Beau Maverick
That show was on over 45 years ago… & I’m younger than that!
Mason-Dixon polls:
McCain 46, Obama 45 in Ohio
McCain 47, Obama 41 in West Virginia
Obama 51, McCain 39 in Wisconsin
I now have Ohio back in the McCain column by a grand total of 0.1 per cent.
Meanwhile it took Fox 5 minutes on it’s 8.00 am PT news to mention the Powell endorsement. They led with complaints that Obama campaign is raising too much money and then having the audacity to spend it and voter fraud. The first half hour was mainly all about voter fraud. Don’t they know how to spell “Florida”?
jjulian1009 @ 9,
Missouri has an exemplary record as a bellwether. The state has voted for the victor in every presential election from 1960 onwards; a longer unbroken streak than any other state. It also voted for the winner in every election from 1904 to 1952. So 1956 (when it voted Democrat against the grain) is its only miss in 26 contests.
These days it probably leans slightly to the Republican side of the ledger, but not by much. I’m not surprised Obama’s doing well there now that he’s well ahead nationally. There may be a lot of rednecks there, but like Pennsylvania that’s balanced by the liberal enclaves at each end of the state.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/2/hi/americas/7678788.stm
Indeed Powell has backed Obama. Bush and the Republican Party have ruined their moral, social, and now economic credentials, with disapproval ratings in the 70-80% range.
I’m glad the US senate swung back to 49-49 with 2 ind at the 2006 legislative election. With Obama’s poll momentum, there should be no issues seeing Obama as the next US president with a majority in both houses.
Darn,
Now wait for the other shoe to drop
William @ 71,
It may be that close but only in Ohio [ not nationally
]
Isn’t it all a bit been-there-done-that for Powell?
Even if he’s offered a spot, would he take it? I recall he rejected an offer to serve in Bill Clinton’s cabinet.
Re 71 & 76,
David @ 77, I don’t recall that he endorsed Clinton at any point. That decision, in and of itself, is a major change in mindset.
The fact that there are racists anywhere in the world is not surprising. There’d be a number of black voters who are not voting for McCain because he is white, but people are not whining about that.
ltep, i know that there are racists out there, i’ve lived in that kind of country growing up. the unofficial michigan headquarters of the K K K was almost literally in my back yard growing up, between 10 to 15 miles away. there weren’t any black students at my schools growing up.
you missed the point. rather than lecturing me about racism being a fact of life, you should have been upset or shocked about the form/method/mode that racism took in this instance. It is 2008 and the 21st century. Such crude methods of demonstrating someones point should resonate in civilized society.
Black voters won’t be voting for McCain because he’s a Republican.
Matty Drudge is headlining with Powell’s endorsement. Powell has said what a lot of Repugs have said, which is that Palin was his reason for deserting the Repug ticket.
Powell endorses Obama for president
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27265369/
RCP average down to +5. Finally that stupid +14 is out of the picture.
William Bowe @ 63
Good call on Zogby Internet Poll.
Here’s what Nate Silver at 538.com said today about Zogby’s Daily Tracker:
The national tracking polls are actually in pretty good agreement with one another, with IBD/TIPP, Research 2000, Gallup, and Hotline all settling in the 5-7 point range. Zogby is the outlier at Obama +2.7, and that’s because Zogby has the odd practice of fixing his poll’s party identification weights based on what they were in the last presidential election. In Zogby’s world, then, it’s still 2004, when there were roughly as many Republicans as Democrats. Although Zogby’s trendlines may be worth looking at, his topline numbers are basically unusable.
OZ,
Does RCP use Zogby’s Obama +2.7 in his + 5 average.
Malcolm Fraser has endorsed Obama. As someone old enough to remember 1975, I don’t think that makes me more inclined to like him.
They rounded it up to 3.
Excluding that, the average is 5.4.
I’m sure that any remaining Obama sceptics from the militant Centre have had all of their doubts allayed by the resounding endorsement of Obama by the very serious and considered Powell, who knows more than anyone whether Obama has the requisite experience and qualities to be POTUS.
Now let us now speak any further of the matter.
Two questions:
1. In the early hours of this morning (about 4.30am) Fox announced that the latest Gallup tracking poll was showing 52/42 for Obama. I checked the internet but was unable to confirm those figures and no-one else seems to be quoting them. Can anyone else tell me if they have seen the 52/42 figures?
2. Does anyone know when Bush’s proposed financial summit is scheduled for and is it going to occur before polling day. .
bob @ 74 said:
“I’m glad the US senate swung back to 49-49 with 2 ind at the 2006 legislative election. With Obama’s poll momentum, there should be no issues seeing Obama as the next US president with a majority in both houses.”
I dearly wish that were the case, but a Senate minority can stop any bill from passing through by stopping debate closure with only 41 votes (filibuster). Only 1/3 of the Senate up for re-election, and it appears the Republicans (even without their buddy Lieberman) are most likely to have 41 to 43 Senators in the new Congress. This is important for Cabinet appointments and Supreme Court nominations as well as money bills.
Also please note, that Dem Senators from southern states will often vote against the party majority policy. If Democrats were to pull off the long shot of 60 Senators after this election, you can bet a handful will be such “Bluedogs”. It’s almost better to have them stay Republican for all the damage they will do opposing Obama on issues that could hurt the Sentors’ chances of re-election in their home states.
Think of our own “maverick” Senator Barnaby Joyce, except he only talks a good game to be able to spend more time with his loved ones (those would be the folks with the cameras and microphones), then votes with the Coalition.
Darn,
Yes, that’s the Gallup Poll number for registered voters, not the “likely” voters.
Can I just point out that Zogby is a cretin? He reports his tracking poll at 52.7%, ie to three degrees of accuracy. His MOE is about 3%.
How can you report a decimal point of accuracy when you inaccuracy level is ten times that? The answer is that you cannot honestly do that. I assume he has some knowledge of basic mathematics and knows this. So he is completely dishonestly trying to make his poll look more accurate than it is.
Darn,
Here’s the Gallup likely voter information from their website today:
A Tighter Race Among Likely Voters
Gallup is also looking at the race according to two likely voter scenarios. One, the traditional Gallup approach, takes into account voters’ intention to participate in the current election as well as their voting history in previous presidential elections. Among this group, Obama leads McCain by three points, 49% to 46%. This is similar to Obama’s standing among traditional likely voters over the past five days.
An alternate approach to defining likely voters uses only voters’ self-professed likelihood to vote in 2008, and does not factor in whether they voted in past elections. This model assumes that new registrants and infrequent voters will be more heavily represented in the pool of voters who turn out on Election Day than has been the case historically. Among this more broadly defined likely voter group, Obama leads by seven points, 51% to 44%. — Lydia Saad
Diogenes,
Throughout the 2004 and 2006 elections, I was one of Zogby’s internet poll respondents. I can attest that there is absolutely no verification of whether respondents were what they reported themselves to be, which didn’t stop Zogby from publishing the results (that William Bowe has rejected).
Although one assumes Zogby has verified the veracity of the identification of it’s tracking poll respondents, it’s use of 2004 Repub to Dem voter ratio is suspect. By contrast, Gallup is presenting its data in both 2004 and 2008 models (see my previous post #95), letting the media/aggregation websites choose which they want to include.
Adam,
Although I feel as negative as you regarding Fraser’s “coup” in 1975, it was not Fraser who sacked Whitlam.
Over the decades, I’ve come to lay a lot more responsibility for the sacking on Whitlam’s own abysmal judgment in his appointment of a drunken egomaniac like Kerr as Governor-General and his subsequent appointment of Lionel Murphy to the Supreme Court, which gave Bjelke-Petersen the opportunity to replace Murphy with a bogus Labor Senator who voted with Fraser to block supply.
Compared to Howard’s reign, the Fraser governments were moderate and certainly did not generate the considerable redistribution of wealth to the rich which we’ve endured over the past 12 years. Fraser also spoke out against racism around the world and continues to do so.
I think this should be nipped in the bud right here.
I haven’t experienced a Dismissal discussion on this site and I’m sure it’s very illuminating but I dunno if a US election thread is the best place for it?
jjulian much as I’d love to debate that with you, I don’t have time this morning and it’s also off-topic. Perhaps William can establish a “arguing about 1975″ thread?
Adam and OZ,
Good call!
Ok no debates on 1975 from this corner, I was recovering from Watergate at that time ……
On Fraser’s actions of today in 2008, GOOD on him
Can we have a URL please???
thanks
Julie
Do you think this “Joe the plumber” crap is assisting McCain in Ohio? I must admit I’m getting a bit sick of hearing about it myself.
I thought it was killed off when they found out he owes back taxes, isn’t a registered plumber, and earns under $250,000 a year, so he would be better off on Obama’s tax plan.
Now they’ve moved on to the Todd Palin the Hunter and Fisher argument, in which he proposes that core American values are hunting and fishing:
http://www.eschatonblog.com/2008_10_19_archive.html#1494430979794468107
Darn, I’ve no bloody idea …… I’ve ignored it all myself; meaning that any article or reference therein, I’ve went out of my way to avoid it …..
For a brilliant summary of the Sunday U.S. political talk shows, read this:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/19/tv-soundoff-sunday-talkin_n_135907.html
I have to say that I find it a bit unsettling that a bloke can’t ask an election candidate a tough question these days without being descended upon by an international network of partisan attack dogs.
Americans come November 4th will have to decide whether they are still pro-country, Pro-life, Pro-Gun and Pro-Family.
The leftist Liberal agenda with the prospect if the polls are correct of getting a supermajority in both the Executive Branch(Presidency) and the Legislative (Congress).
The polls are so bad for the Republicans at the moment that in the Senate they may not even have the numbers after November to filibuster. This could lead to the third and final branch of Government the Judicary to see the appointment of more Liberals to the Supreme Court. There decision will make even Wade vs Roe tame in comparsion.
Americans i live in a supermajority leftist Liberal country Australia will Labor-Liberal-and Green all pandering to the chattering classes of the Liberal elite with only the small National Party trying to stand up to Conservative values with very limited media coverage. Without the USA retaining at least some Conservative values I’ll have nothing to look for to offer me hope and inspiration down under.
People in glass houses…
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-fraud20-2008oct20,0,3842357.story
What about Pro-stitute?
If that’s what the U.S. people vote for, then that’s what the U.S. people vote for. Voters are never wrong.
Why do you see this as a problem? Plus, in all likelihood Lieberman is going to become a Republican after the election anyway.
Well, Bush appointed two conservatives there, so why can’t a liberal President appoint some liberals to balance things out?
Roe V Wade was tame, it found that there is an implied right to privacy in the constitution, including the right of people to do what they like to their own bodies.
Good, because the economic policies the U.S. has pursued over the last eight years has resulted in economic ruin. So they aren’t inspirational.
Yeah, any questions a candidate doesn’t want to answer – or answers poorly – is now dismissed as “gotcha journalism”.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/29/mccain-palin-joint-interv_n_130412.html
Paul Nash, feel free to go and live in Saudi Arabia.
Americans who cherish the right to bear arms beware.
The Howard Liberal Government in 1996 introduced the toughest gun laws in Australia that infringed that right. I remember Liberals in the United States at the time appauded the Howard Australian Government in rallies in DC.
A supermajority Democrat victory with the most Liberal President perhaps since JFK who was hamstrung somewhat by a narrow victory against Nixon the US could be heading down the same path as Australia some 12 years later.
Only the then NSW National Party leader Ian Armstrong stood up for gunowners rights the silence was deafening from all parties in Australia. When such Liberal treachery happens its very hard to remove.
I think McCain is wishing he selected Powell has his running mate about now:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0808/12753.html
He would’ve been a brilliant candidate compared to Palin or even Lieberman.
MAKE MORE SENSE. The U.S. constitution does not apply to Australians. There is no right to guns in the Australian constitution.
I’ve heard people are allowed to own as many guns as they want in Iraq, why don’t you move there?
I think the attitude of multiple Australian governments to gun ownership has something to do with Australia being a democracy. The overwhelming majority of Australians back gun control. When we looked back on the Howard eras achievements after he lost the election (it didn’t take long), I distinctly recall unanimous support for his gun control laws being the most positive thing Howie did.
That’s the best thing I can remember.
Oh, and giving one billion dollars worth of aid to Indonesia after the tsunami. I’m sure Howard doing that drove some conservatives insane.
The cost of Living in Australia has skyrocked under both (Liberal) Labor and Liberal Governments with taxes on just about everything. When I travel to the United States i’m so surprised by how cheap things are allthough the price varies depending on different state VATs.
Americans are so lucky particularly in regard to fuel, alcohol and cigarettes compared to Australia. I remember as a young teenager in Queensland how cheap cigarettes were under the National Party because we had no tobacco tax now its daylight robbery.
A supermajority Liberal Democratic victory could mean increase taxes and charges on everything for the American people and the cost of living will rise considerably for god sake don’t become another Australia.
Colin Powell’s endorsement of Obama has really got the Repug blogs going and split them. The moderates say good on him and say he’s said what a lot of them were thinking. The extreme right have disowned him, labelled him a traitor, unAmerican etc etc. It’s been a great wedge at a time when they really didn’t need one. Newt Gingrich said:
Well let’s be fair here. It was the LIBERALS and the NATIONALS who voted for the G.S.T. Labor opposed it. Go check Hansard if you don’t believe me.
No, IN THIS REGARD, they are stupid. They don’t tax things enough, then complain with their budget is half a trillion in debt.
Have you ever thought of WHY tobacco products are taxed? I’ll give you a one word clue “cancer”.
Paul @ 107,
NOTHING at all wrong with this. What goes around comes around, i.e the swing of the pendulum eventually goes left, it doesn’t always stay right. Get used to it
I think Paul Nash is a Robocall machine that has somehow got hooked up to William’s blog.
Paul Nash
In the words of Malcolm Fraser in the Melbourne Age this morning:
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Showson @ 119
Your rebuttal at me over tobacco products being taxed because of “cancer”
Confirms exactly what is wrong with the elite Liberal agenda thats being forced down our throat. Liberals are obsessed with Health and Education instead of some of the more productive modes of our economy.
Theres no point having the most educated and healthier workforce if theres no jobs for people to get thats why spending on infrastructure is more important that Health and education.
As pink floyd says; “we don’t need no education we don’t need no forced control”
“all and all its just another brick in the wall”
If I choose to smoke i don’t need no trendy health professionals lobbying the Government to tax cigarettes sky high so i’ll be encouraged to give up.
This is just more Liberal social engineering.
Don’t you remember Margaret Thatcher Conservative Prime-Minister of the United Kingdom 1979-1990 famous saying “Theres no such thing as society”
Yeah I remember Malcolm Fraser look what good his meddling did to Rhodesia now a basket case .
The quality of Young Liberal blog training seems to have declined since Generic Person did the course.
I agree Adam all young Liberals are good at is attending cocktail parties.
WHAT!? Are you saying that dead, sick and people who can’t read and write are productive?
LOL! And who informs your infrastructure theory? Led Zepplin? Let me guess, your outlook on energy policy was determined by a critical analysis of AC/DC’s albums?
We agree on this. PLEASE for MY sake keep on smoking. Smoke 100 packs a day for all I care. But if you ever get cancer, promise me that you won’t use a public hospital that I helped pay for, or visit any doctor who studied in Australia who my taxes helped educate.
Yes I remember this moronic statement from a moronic Prime Minister. I didn’t need you to remind me. If it wasn’t for her, apartheid in South Africa would’ve ended a decade sooner.
P.N. is an agrarian socialist, i.e. a member of the Nationals.
http://wvgazette.com/News/200810180251
Paul, don’t forget that Pink Floyd also says: “Money/It’s a hit/Don’t give me that do-goody-good bullshit”. Not to mention: “I know a mouse and he hasn’t got a house/I don’t know why/I call him Gerald”.
Well said William.
This may somewhat help explain Obama’s current leads in Florida and Virigina:
http://www.politico.com/blogs/jonathanmartin/1008/VA_and_FL_state_parties_clashing_with_McCain.html
William Bowe said:
“I have to say that I find it a bit unsettling that a bloke can’t ask an election candidate a tough question these days without being descended upon by an international network of partisan attack dogs.”
I just thought Obama’s answer was weak. It should have been; how do you propose we pay for the wars that have been costing us over 200 billion a year for the last 5 years.
Paul @ 117,
Yes as noted, price varies from one place to the next. Some states apply way more tax than others.
In general though, the main reason that you perceive things as cheaper is because the US doesn’t have to fund all of the helping programs that are available in Australia. I won’t itemize them here, but I’m talking about the various things that are controlled and issued through either Centrelink and/or Medicare. If Obama can get a universal health care proposal (for example) across the board within the potential term limits that he is subject to (max 8 years, 2 terms) you can bet that won’t come cheap. I don’t know how they plan on affording that as I’ve no idea what Iraq is costing each day and I don’t think that just bringing troops home and ending US committment there will be enough. I will be interested to see how they cost that once they have a plan to put forth. Universal health care is badly needed there. As an example, Canada has a system very similar, if not identical to the Aussies, and I am sure that Canadian taxes aren’t dirt cheap in comparison
…
Also, too, you will find that the quality isn’t necessarily as good as ours here in Oz either. This difference is MOST notable with food and groceries. The quality of the identical cut of meat at a US grocery store compared to an Aussie one (quality here, not price) is [if 10 is the best and 0 the worst] is a 4 compared to an Aussie 8 at best, you easily see many 3/9 comparisons. I shopped for food in US markets for the better part of 30+ years {counting only those as an adult where I did my own shopping} compared to 4+ here, but I could immediately see the difference. You pay MORE per unit of weight for something that is only half the quality at best …….
The grass is most definitely NOT greener on the other side of the fence, part of the reason I left the USA.
and back up it goes…
Reuters/CSpan/Zogby national tracking poll:
Obama 50 (up 2)
McCain 44 (down 1)
http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSTRE49J0LF20081020
Are Zogby still weighting their tracking poll based on the 2004 party turn out (which had only a very small lead for the Democrats?)
The Democrats have increased their registration lead by 2 million in the last 4 years, I just can’t see how the turn out will be the same this year as in 2004.
Yes. I’ve seen a few blogs putting Rasmussens internals (a 6%+ Democrat party ID advantage) on a Zogby poll about a week ago and it added around 3 points to Obama.
Nicely said, Juliem. Another reason why things are so “cheap” in the US is that labour tends to be inexpensive. Workers in the service industry are especially low paid – which is why waiting staff depend on tips.
Also, there’s a whole pool of “undocumented workers” in the US that can be drawn upon to keep costs down, in everything from meat packing to construction.
I guess that explains why McCain supported “comprehensive immigration reform”, big business Republicans told him to.
Listening to Powell was a good experience. Calm, rational and with logical argument and well expressed; everything election campaigns are not. He stands out.
Oh Thomas Paine…
No matter how eloquent or calm Powell speaks now, surely you can’t forgive him for Iraq?
More details on newspaper endorsements in the election …..
Juliem, the first paragraph is interesting because I remember reading an article not that long ago pointing out that America is country of small towns. I don’t remember the exact figures (Some cute comparison like 100 cities of 250,000 or > but 250,000 with 10,000 or <. I dunno if that adds up, but something like that.) but I do remember that more than 50% of the US population lives in towns of less than 25,000 or rural areas.
McCain was over performinng during the post Convention Palin boom, he is now under performing. It is likely that he will make up ground in the remaining fortnight.
Pink Floyd did not say either of those line. The education level of some people here is a serious problem. If you must quote song lyrics, please use them correctly. The lines are directed at Pink’s teacher, which would become apparent if they were quoted accurately. The correct lyric are:
“We don’t need no education, we don’t need no THOUGHT control” and “All IN all YOU’RE just another brick in the wall”.
Juliem @ 142. I guess this is a stupid question. Are any of those newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch?
Photo: A Sea of Obama Supporters Spreading Out From Under the St. Louis Arch
http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/node/6728
enjaybee, FYI from Guardian UK
“Rupert Murdoch may have told his biographer that he favoured Barack Obama rather than Hillary Clinton because he’ll sell more papers but Obama is obviously not his choice for president.
Murdoch’s New York Post has backed John McCain. In a lengthy editorial the paper “enthusiastically urges” McCain’s election because of his “lifelong record of service to America, his battle-tested courage, unshakeable devotion to principle and clear grasp of the dangers and opportunities now facing the nation”.”
Enjaybee…. not sure who owns them?
But checking out Wikipedia (when in doubt, go there) a whole list of his assets is given and in the US, as far as only newspapers go, he owns two –
New York Post
The Wall Street Journal
The New York Post endorsed McCain. According to my website source, the WSJ hasn’t made an endorsement as of yet. If I’m wrong on that, can someone else post it if they know different? thanks
Julie, the WSJ hasn’t endorsed a candidate for 70 years.
jjulian,
so unshakeable that he’s turned inside out with his principles since mid year ……..
if he had been running a better campaign, you could honestly believe that he had a clear grasp of things …..
when reading New York papers online, I stop at the NYT and don’t bother with this rag
Ok that answers that then, thanks Oz
….. I’m not terribly economically inclined so rarely read that one, even online … I had no idea …..
Good decision. It’s rubbish.
Australia 34-0 chasing 515, RR of 6.58 an over to start the second innings …. so far Matthew Hayden is hanging onto his wicket for a change
I just had a look at the NYT article on McCain’s health. The melanoma story is a bit of a non-event. Whether the left temple lesion was a local recurrence, in transit metastasis or a primary would have been important 8 years ago but given his disease free status now, he only has a 5% or less chance of dying from the melanoma, which is considerably less than the 20% chance of his dying just because of his age.
They also mentioned that he has tried to commit suicide by hanging with his shirt during his capture in North Vietnam, which I hadn’t seen before. He really has been through hell on earth to get where he is today.
Diogenes, I haven’t read the article but the cr*p the Americans go through about the health checks of their presidents and wannabes is just ludicrous. If he/she is healthy enough to stand, he/she is healthy enough to lead.
Leave the health checks for The West Wing and Bartlett’s MS (he was still th ebst candidate)
Aussies now 4/52… Ponting out for 2… it’s a shellacking.
Dio,
I think most, if not all, POW’s will say that they’ve to varying degrees been there and back. I haven’t read heaps of stories but I’ve read a few over the years. The immediate ones that come to mind are from men who were hostage in Iran in 1979 and 1980 (when Iran stormed the US embassy). That wasn’t what you might percieve as a traditional theatre of war but they weren’t nice at all. I’ve also read Weary Dunlops war diaries.
Bottom line though is the one which numerous people have said over and over (not just PB’ers but many others as well).
Being a POW doesn’t entitle you to being POTUS.
Btw, are you still happy with 293 / No on MO / Minnesota?
MO is Missouri, not Minnesota…
I’m happy on 293, ie all the obvious ones plus CO and VA. I’ve lived through too much electoral pain in the last decade to have too much faith in the electorate agreeing with me. Bush x 2, Howie x 4 and Blair x 3 (?) . Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, Ratzinger was elected Pope, which pissed me off inordinately and was really the icing on the cake.
Kevin Rudd has restored my faith in humanity but I’m still a Cynic.
Dio, I knew that …. perhaps I should have said No on MO {will Obama win it?} and MN as the state to put him over the top?
…..
understand cynics no worries there ….. until Obama got way ahead in the polls since roughly mid September, I was there myself …. to the point of telling everyone who would listen that if the Dems can’t use these circumstances in 2008 to get their candidate into the White House, I was walking into the US consulate in Perth in February next year [we move to Perth in January] to resign my US citizenship. Fortunately, I won’t need to go there now, well at least not for that reason
Without term limits here, I was beginning to despair would JH EVER go? Aussie politics put much more of the cynic in me than did the US politics in spite of Florida 2000. I asked myself on a regular basis over the JH years “what ARE the voters thinking?” ….
Done and dusted now, he’s gone … and soon enough, the last of the triumverate will be gone as well (Blair/Howard/Bush). Blair was a Labor PM and good on him for that, but I’m glad I wasn’t a British voter, I would never have been able to forgive him his decision to stick the British interests up the US’s backside ….. you would have seen me voting the British equivelent of the Greens for the last how ever many years now ….
Hey! I beat William for once. Obi incereases his lead from 3% to 6%. Drudge seems to have dropped his topline link to an article in which Zogby says Obama’s lead is dropping to “Red Flag level”. I wonder why…
New Zogby Obama 50, McCain 44 +6%
Dario posted this nearly 5 hours ago!
Julie,
Re: your comment @ 151: Here, here!
Re: your comment @ 160: Here, here with bells on for “to stick the British interests up the US’s backside ….. ” Seriously droll!
But please don’t sugarcoat us—tell us what you REALLY think? :>)
Did anyone see Insiders yesterday and Tim Blair’s final tip that McCain is not done?
Just bizarre that.
Sorry juliem. It did seem a bit weird what with you being American and all.
Blair was the worst of all the triumvirate in my book. He sold out everything his party stood for. At least I expected it from Howie and Bush. Blair’s conduct with Iraq was utterly reprehensible. His simplistic Manichean world view led to untold misery, not the least in his own family.
ShowsOn
I’ll crawl back in my barrell.
Thanks ShowsOn
Grog, Obama says the same thing. What does that make him: bizarre, or dishonest?
I’m after some help. Someone provided a link to an article on CDO’s and CDS’s and how they totalled some astronomical amount and which if my memory serves me correctly was in Time Magazine. I thought the posting would have been on on one of these US Presidential sites but having gone back through them all was unable to find it. So rather than go back through all postings for the last two weeks or so was wondering whether anybody out there in pollbludger land could direct me to the link.
The media not wanting to admit a political campaign is a done deal? Craziness!
Finns
Can we have an explanation please?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7679180.stm
jj,
I simply never ever understood Blair’s decision to do that. Bush suckered them both in hook, line and sinker. Howard I could understand (although I didn’t agree with, I could see where Howard was coming from) – a idealistic soulmate AND being hunkered down in a Washington hotel while it was all coming down on 9/11. Blair there was absolutely NO excuse for his participation in that circus. Outside of that, Blair had nothing in common idealistically with US Republicans at all. I’m surprised that the Labor party took as long as they did to turf him out. I’m not using bad words to describe it because they will get caught up in Williams spam filter
….. and that isn’t my style either, I like to try to skirt around my anger and feelings without being too crass about it, find creative ways to say @()#*@)($*()@#$*(@#*@() 
Lets just suffice to say that they are all 3 idiots but who is the lower or worse grade of idiot? The one who starts it or those who follow him blindly without doing their homework?
Would Labor under Beazley have gone to Iraq as well?
ltep, if they had, they would have lost me to the greens …. although I am a labor voter through and through, issues are the most important to me. It just happens that 98% of the time, the issues labor support happen to also be those I agree with.
when they drop the ball, I wouldn’t hesitate to ditch them for the greens ….
would Beazely have done it? I don’t know .. I would like to think that being someone with a big defence background that he would have realized Bush’s lies for what they were and would have instead exposed the fallacies of them on the spot … but that is hypothetical now …..
They always said they would only do so with a UN resolution, and I tend to believe that position
Being someone with a strong defence background he probably would have realised the importance of the US alliance as well…
Anyway, something I found out about Obama today – He, like McCain, promised not to accept private donations and run his campaign on public money. However he didn’t keep that promise. Good on him for breaking records and getting new donators and all that but it would have been better if he hadn’t promised to do one thing and then changed his mind, and better still if all candidates were on an even keel when it comes to money so the election is decided on issues not on how much one candidate outspent another candidate in a particular swing seat.
How does the US electoral commission decide how who gets the money? Why does McCain get $80 million and Nader nothing?
All I know is he said this in parliament on 18 March 2003:
All’s well bludgers. I searched history on my computer and found the article there. Should have thought if that in the first place. Silly me!
A little from Column A, and a little from Column B
For that Zogby tracking poll to jump up by 3 points after trending down must mean that Sunday’s 1/3 was a whopper for Obama
Diplomatic
But seriously, of Obama would say that. You only say how confident you were in your book written after the fact.
Of course I meant to write “of course Obama would …”
(stupid “post comment” button – it should have a “do you really want to post that ungrammatical missive?” message.)
Zogby is doing their polls in a very strange way, quite different from the other polling companies – something I read somewhere!
juliem
well done for the BOTLO
who is left that can endorse Obama
Cindy?
Powell’s endorsement is very well stated and quite powerful. He still hasn’t told us where the WMDs are though…
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/54418.html
Any chance Chuck Hagel will follow his wife’s lead and endorse Obama?
Daily Kos/Research 2000 tracking poll:
OBAMA 50
MCCAIN 42
SurveyUSA Minnesota poll
Obama 50 (up 4)
McCain 44 (down 3)
This was the last poll to show McCain leading the state, and the RCP average is now at 9%+
http://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollReport.aspx?g=e97fbca6-1c5d-4132-b7b6-2e13d2c16a80
Obama’s lead on RCP is up 0.5 per cent, which puts him back in front in Ohio and North Dakota on my aggregates.
Hahahaha, it seems Zogby has Gary Morgan’s tendencies
a day later…
Idiot. Shut up and spit out the numbers.
I have this vague recollection that Zogby thought Kerry was going to win comfortably in 2004.
So I don’t know how seriously we should take Zogby polls.
Obama wants Powell to have a role in his administration:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/20/colin-powell-to-have-role_n_136076.html
New poll for Pennsylvania:
Obama 53
McCain 41
Yet again, why on earth is McCain still wasting money on a state he won’t win?
And I read that Republicans in Florida are openly admitting that their campaign to retain that state is in a shambles. Obama/Hillary are there today for a joint get out the vote rally.
No idea. He should be going back and forth between Ohio, Florida, Virginia, and North Carolina, and just hope that he can fluke wins in Nevada and Colorado. (I’m assuming Missouri, Indiana. North Dakota etc are both actually safe Republican)
My guess is that it’s because it’s one of the few major blue states that doesn’t have early voting, so his effective chances of turning it around before polling day are a lot better than any of the others. Let’s face it, at the rate the red states have flipped, he simply has no choice but to try and win some blues to offset that. Polls of early voters (their accuracy is questionable I’ll admit) have been showing very high flows to Obama, so PA offers him his best shot over the final two weeks.
Ohio goes back to McCain after RCP nudges back his way, presumably because of a 50-46 Rasmussen. Oh, the excitement …
you have to wonder…
with a disastrous mccain campaign, a economic crises, a toxic republican party and equally unpopular president, a massive fundraising advantage, a generally favorable media environment, why isn’t Obama doing better?
Gusface @ 185
I also said that Obama would have Colin Powell in his cabinet in some capacity ….
Like Malcolm in this country, he has seen the light …..
showson, you can’t assume missouri and indiana are safe in the final end game. someone here on PB posted yesterday so somewhere on this thread that missouri is a nice bellweather state and has voted with the winner for some number of elections in a row, can’t remembe how many ……
missouri will go in the end, indiana is suspect because obama is working that state very hard with his ground campaign ….
Re 195 & 200,
Stories from the front line in the US
seanofperth asks
Then center is disappearing from America?
Rasmussen Virginia poll:
Obama 54
McCain 44
PP North Carolina Poll:
Obama 51
McCain 44
The Powell endorsement might be working for Obama already
Question: why can’t Obama get any sort of lead in Ohio?
Are there too many whites in that state who won’t vote for him because he’s black?
VA continues to made me very happy.
SUSA Obi by 6%
Rasm Obi by 10%
And I agree with McCain in PA. It’s time to give it up. His campaign really is hopeless.
William,
Occasionally, you’ve expressed wonder about what is going on in NH and what has set those voters off. One of these stories might answer those questions …
ABC News/Washington Post Poll:
Obama 53
McCain 44
Drudge is doing something really weird. His headline is faithfully reporting the changing RCP national average (Currently it is “Obama by 5.8%”). There’s no more cherry-picking Zogby polls with idiotic Zogby comments. And there is clearly a swing to Obama, presumably based on Powell’s endorsement.
McCain campaign accidentally asks Russian U.N. ambassador for a donation:
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24528953-23109,00.html
The Russians of course couldn’t help but make a reference to the U.S.’s cold war activities:
I’m surprised he didn’t switch to headlining Rasmussen or Hotline which both moved McCain’s way. Too bad most of the other polls went to Obama instead I guess…
McCain people are privately admitting that Iowa/New Mexico/Colorado aren’t looking good for them. Their new strategy seems to be winning all other battleground states,and getting a victory in Pennsylvania – unlikely as that sounds.
Push polling from Zogby interactive?
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/10/15/13844/116
50,000 were at the Obama/Hillary rally in Florida earlier today
23/6 is getting on board with the Irish betting agency that declared the election about 10 days or so ago
…
Hillary Clinton would’ve been the 44th and 45th and 46th President of the U.S.
Re 215,
More from the First Read site [ MSNBC ] quoted in this story
No way ShowsOn, she would have been 47th & 48th as well so she could break FDR’s record
From the depths of one MSNBC article ….
A Suffolk University poll has Obama up 51-42 in Ohio, which puts an end to the ping pong game on my polling aggregates. Obama is also up 1 per cent on RCP. However, Suffolk has McCain leading 45-44 in Missouri.
Virgina now looks totally gone. RCP has an 8% Obama lead which is just incredible.
Regarding the variability in US polls, why is it so poor? Even when sample size seems reasonable they still seem to swing wildly. I am curious if William, Adam or others have a view on this. Do they use similar methodologies to firms here?
Some of it may be down to them changing their internal weightings from poll to poll. Very hard to quantify that when a lot of them don’t publish those internals though.
What an amazing speech from Hillary today in Florida. She is so passionate, and a great orator. I hope that Barak has a good spot in cabinet for her, maybe Secretary of State. Secondly I think that Obama should announce that if there is any electoral fraud or attempts at same, he promises to use the full extent of the law to prosecute those involved when he wins. Maybe the idea of 25 years in a federal pen may make the repugs and diebold think twice about their dirty tricks.
Socrates – US polling has to deal with voluntary voting that Australian polls dont. As a result, the two key issues for US polls are trying to determine likely voter turnout, and then breaking that down by demographic.
If the likely voter screen is poor, then voting estimate fluctuations will be large (because the sample will contain smaller amounts of registered voters that nearly always vote the same way, leaving a relatively larger sub-sample of likely voters that dont behave like registered voters and which are prone to having larger voting intention variability). Add to that the almost arbitrary way that some pollsters keep adjusting their demographic and party ID weighting and, well, you end up with the dogs breakfast we currently have.
McCain giving up on Colorado…
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/10/20/mccain-camp-looking-for-way-to-win-without-colorado/
Possum
Thanks. I see now why you follow Intrade. Either way, its over, Obama will win.
215 & 216
[BARACK OBAMA HAS WON THE ELECTION AND IS THE 44TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.
Hillary Clinton would’ve been the 44th and 45th and 46th President of the U.S].
If Hillary had been running McCain would have conceded by now and she would have been president by acclamation weeks ago..
224
I agree. Hillary deserves a prominent role in an Obama administration. Preferably health, which she seems to have a passion for.
Thanks for the elucidation, Possum. I assume you’re including geographic weighting variables, a huge factor in a country with even greater regional diversity than Australia. Obviously, a Democrat in a deep south state like Alabama is a different sub-species than one in New York City (i.e. Blue Dog congress critters).
There’s also each candidate’s home state/region variable to consider. I think this has helped Obama to consolidate his lead in some Great Lakes states which two months ago appeared much more hopeful for McCain and, perhaps, Iowa. This might also assist Obama in the bordering state of Missouri, although work in McCain’s favour in Nevada.
Sam Wang’s (at princeton election consortium website) methodology of aggregating only state polls to come up with his meta-analysis holds more weight weight me than RCP or EV.com or 538. (Today, Prof. Wang has Obama’s meta-margin lead at +7% and the Electoral Vote estimate at O 364 to M 174.)
Juliem and Showson,
Missouri’s Prez. voting record since ‘56 makes it a bellweather state—nevertheless, it’s worth keeping in mind that since ‘64, the only Democrats it supported are from the South (Texas, Georgia, Arkansas). I’ve heard of no changes in MO’s demographic profile such as can be found in VA, CO and NM, so I’m heeding William’s latest numbers: “Suffolk has McCain leading 45-44 in Missouri.”
BTY, Julie, excellent summation of the degrees of culpability among Bush, Blair and Howard. I reckon there would be a high degree of correlation with Dante’s levels of hell. Cheers! :>)
This “Hillary would have been even further ahead than Obama” myth just won’t go away, will it? Obama and Hillary each bring a different demographic to the table. But the thing that gets overlooked most often is that Hillary would have fired up the Republican base far better than McCain, or especially Palin, could ever do. It’s a little scary how many self-proclaimed ‘Hillary Haters’ there are in America. They would have come out in droves to vote AGAINST Hillary – and may have undercut the prospects for many Dem congressional candidates as well, especially in some red states.
Obama is fresh and new, and he epitomises change. I can’t imagine Colin Powell endorsing Hillary.
Missouri is not really a bellweather state any more. It’s no ‘Eden-Monaro’, that’s for sure. It’s been drifting toward the GOP side of the ledger for a while now, and it’s only “up for grabs” when the Dems are having a banner year. The Dems did well in the mid-terms of ‘06 (they picked up a surprise Senate seat), but this year it’ll be tough for McCain to lose Missouri. Obama will make him work for it though.
Obama is $1.07 with Sportsbet. McCain $7.60. It’s over allright.
Kakuru,
It’s also worth noting that in 2000 Missouri supported the candidate (by a margin of over 3%) who actually lost the national popular vote, but “won” the Electoral College due to the fact that his brother was the Gov. of Florida and the fact that the Supreme Court had a majority of Republican appointed justices (who overturned the orders of the Florida Supreme Court which had a majority of Democratic appointed justices). As you said, no “Eden-Monaro”.
Darn,
On IASbet, in only the past week, McCain blew out from $5 to $7.
Yep, Darn… When you hear McCain needing to shore up Missouri and North Carolina it reminds me a lot of when Howard was campaigning in seats like Dawson and Leichhardt last year.
McCain hasn’t a prayer in Pennsylvania, which (trending in the opposite direction to Missouri) is becoming ‘bluer’ – thanks largely to the ballooning suburbs of Philadelphia, I think. Even Kerry easily won PA.
Yep, jjulian009. They’ll be no such shenanigans this time in Florida. I’m fascinated to know which way Florida goes though.
I would have been very surprised if McCain ever had a chance in Pennsylvania. The sub-prime crisis has hit very hard in Philadelphia thanks to predatory lending practices on poorer neighborhoods. (mainly home equity loans – nothing to do with CRA) See:
http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2007/10/11/betting-the-house
BTW, here is a good overview of sub-prime. Note impact on Cleveland, Ohio.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7073131.stm
Obama taking several days off of the campaign trail to be with his gravely ill grandmother in Hawaii …
[
Citing the family’s desire for privacy, Gibbs would not discuss the nature of Dunham’s illness. It seemed likely that she was close to death, as Gibbs said that “everyone understands the decision that Sen. Obama is making.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/20/obama-leaving-campaign-tr_n_136373.html
Here’s a great article by Wolfson who tells us that Nixonland is dead.
http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_flack/archive/2008/10/18/the-end-of-nixonland.aspx
Re 80,
Ok, mate. Above was in reply to the story I posted about about a bloke in Ohio who hung an effigy of Barack Obama in his front yard.
Now, the campaign is hitting new lows, points in the gutter that ought to make even hardened right wingers wince [note; the events described herein happened in North Carolina].
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/21/us/politics/21poll.html?_r=1&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin
Juliem
the fact the campaign is going that way is not surprising. However I can’t help thinking how similar that is to the closiong weeks of the Australian 2007 election. In that case though, the nasty tactics backfired badly. The conservative electorates where they were tried in NSW and Victoria were lost. I could see the same thing happening in the US. The biggots will stay republican, but liberal conservatives like Powell are already jumping ship.
Did I say liberal conservative? Silly me! I meant educated conservatives.
Negative attacks don’t work when you have already been painted as being desperate
Socrates, I know, I wish the election were over already. But that, unfortunately, might not be enough to stop this s***. Sorry William for using asterisks to evade your spam and bad words filter. It takes a lot to get me mad but this story today has done it. I’m afraid that it won’t stop with the election when I give it a second though, beyond the first thought in the first sentence above. It is morons like the unmentioned individual who perpetrated this act and the bloke in Ohio that make me ashamed to even admit that I am American. On a blog like this, no one would know unless I mentioned it. However, for the most part, when I open my mouth to speak, people know it straight away (unless they occasionally confuse me for Canadian, which happens 10 to 20 % of the time).
I apologize profusely for what it is worth for my fellow Americans who are doing these things. I know it won’t change anything but it marginally makes me feel better.
I hope Obama wins North Carolina after this.
Current NC polling data, while Obama ahead it is still listed as tossup by RCP …
North Carolina: McCain vs. Obama
(Starting October 11 partisan affiliated polls will not be added to the RCP Poll Averages.)
Polling Data
Poll Date Sample MoE Obama (D) McCain (R) Spread
RCP Average 10/13 – 10/19 — – 48.3 46.0 Obama +2.3
FOX News/Rasmussen 10/19 – 10/19 1000 LV 3.0 51 48 Obama +3
Research 2000 10/14 – 10/15 600 LV 4.0 46 44 Obama +2
InAdv/PollPosition 10/13 – 10/13 474 LV 5.0 48 46 Obama +2
Intrade Market Prices for North Carolina: McCain vs. Obama
Obama 60.0 McCain 40.0
juliem
I heard a rumour that SC might be interesting…
I’m really hoping that VA and NC go to Obama coz I’ve got a bet with one of the naughtier ‘bludgers (ESJ, and I KNOW YOU’RE OUT THERE) about those three.
Where is ESJ?
Gary @ 249, don’t borrow trouble please
……
More to the point, where’s Ronster?
juliem @ 246: “I apologize profusely for what it is worth for my fellow Americans who are doing these things. I know it won’t change anything but it marginally makes me feel better.”
As a brother American, please permit me to join in your apology.
I’ve made enough apologies for our fellow Americans since 20th January 2001 to last the rest of my life.
Zogby poll is out (it’s released at 1am US ET, 4pm AEST). It now has O by 8, 50-42, two days ago it was 47-44, sounds good to me.
http://www.zogby.com/
and apparently Obama is smashing Mccain among early voters by 21%
anyhoo the national polls are all over the place.
Trouble with modelling for registered vs likely voters ??
Yanks are weird.
I still suspect Hillary would have been further ahead but to get 60+ in the Senate Obama is more likely to boost African-American turnout in Georgia and Mississippi.
By at least 34.12% no less
Apparently, modelling says that 1/3 of voters will vote early, so if O can maintain a big lead among this group, things are looking very good.
I reckon Zogby must have been doing some more tinkering with his internals… his polls just move around far too much
This argument that Hilliary would have been further ahead is as good as saying if your aunty had gonads she’d be your uncle. What a useless exercise and a waste of brain power.
Surely you jest. With my super duper brainy thingy I am able to calculate to 2 decimal places how front she would be in front by!!! You know it makes sense
Given that all the Hillary fans seem to have deserted us, we can say what we want about whether Hillary would be ahead, and by how much.
I think Hillary would be behind, and by planty. I base this on her terrible negative personal ratings and her lack of support among independents. The Clintons are fly-paper for mud-slinging whereas Obi is Teflon coated. Moderate Democrats have a terrible record recently. Remember Gore and Kerry losing to The Imbecile. It was time for integrity, intelligence and character to come to the fore instead of the old dead politics of division, cheating and lying. Hillary has been consigned to the waste-paper basket of politics where she belongs.
Well said, Diogenes. I’ve nothing against Hillary, but she has too much baggage.
SACRILEGE!!!! I CAST THEE OUT!
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24530344-12377,00.html
Sarah has been out teachin the kids ta shoot doncha know
I think either Hillary or Obama would have been in front at this point but Diogenes is quite right – its academic at this point. Obama has run a pretty error free campaign so far, so at this point I don’t know that Hillary could have done any better. Lets just hope Obama keeps the troops calm for two more weeks and he should be all right on the night.
Julie, s*** isn’t in my moderation filter. Medium-level coarse language is frowned upon, but not actually banned. Ron has not taken kindly to the new hands-on comments regime and has politely informed me he has withdrawn from the fray. ESJ is a seasonal malady.
Looks like there are two pigeons with some explaining to do. Wasn’t there a pigeon in WWII who was nominated for the Victoria Cross or something?
Iran busts ’spy pigeons’ near nuclear site
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=081020091136.9y3qoow5&show_article=1
I don’t think I would have defined what Ron used to spew as ‘comments’… they were more like ‘ravings’
Actually, I was pretty close.
You sure that’s not from The Onion?
“Ravings regime”, then.
Rofl Diogenes. You seem pretty pleased with yourself. Good effort.
I’m not kidding. This is a real story. The pigeons are just lucky that it was Iranians they were spying on, not the Americans. It would be pretty ugly watching a pigeon get waterboarded.
http://www.arabianbusiness.com/535267-iran-arrests-two-spy-pigeons-near-nuclear-facility?ln=en
Diog, the Amigos have decided to let you have the bragging rights for the moment. So enjoy your days in the sun while it lasts. It’s gonna be very cloudy up in Macchu Piccu.
Hillary would’ve been on 32 cents.
I don’t understand this. I thought to be scientific you need to work out your methodology then stick to it. If that means your results are biased, atleast the bias will be consistent. Then if you think you need to rework the methodology you can do that in time for the next electoral cycle.
He just needs time to work out what “core ‘left’ policys’ actually means.
Well, the registration data is changing all the time as new voters are registered…
But at this late stage wouldn’t the changes only equate to a few tenths of a percent? Surely within the margin of error of most polls.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/20/nytcbs-poll-obama-has-hig_n_136407.html
Each day I become more convinced that picking Palin is one of the biggest foot bullets in U.S. Presidential politics.
Yep. but I think that she will come of it better in the Repubs party than McCain. McCain will be derided as a fool who didn’t stand for anything; Palin will be viewed as the only thing that cut through.
At least that is my hope – it will fuel Palin 2012 hopes that will give BO 48 states next time round (I’ll give her Alaska and Texas!)
In theory yes. It depends whether they were moving from 2004 figures to 2008 figures in one go for example. With Zogby god only knows. A lot of the pollsters also switched from regsitered voters to likely voters over the last few months or so, which would have seen some changes.
Here is one state where Obama will get reverse coattails moving upwards from down the ticket
….
Will Obama suspending his campaign for 2 days(to visit his sick Grandma) have any effect, positive or negative? Surely McCain, out of respect for the Obama family, will cease the nasty negative bashing for 2 days? Nah, probably not!
Christopher Hitchens has another go at Palin:
http://www.slate.com/id/2202642/
He proposes that the media refuse to run any stories about her until she holds a proper press conference!
He’ll probably make an advert pointing out that Obama pals around with his grandma.
Sarah Palin’s sole purpose is to get the racist, redneck vote out for McCain!
Evan14 @ 282,
Obama isn’t suspending his campaign per se, not the way McCain supposedly did during the Hurricane Gustav and the financial crisis in Washington. He is just personally taking time off of the campaign trail. From the story I read, I believe that Biden and/or Michelle will stand in for his campaign appearences during that “time off”.
Somwhow I don’t think Obama taking time to be with his dying Grandmother is going to lose him any votes.
Try and imagine someone who would change their vote becasue of it:
So Bubba why did you cote for McCain?
“Well I was all for Obama, but then he went and sat by the bed of his dying grandmother who helped raised him. I mean, that’s just not right. I can’t vote for a guy who cares that much about loved ones.”
Even the writers of my favourite film blog met up with Obama (they are from Wisconsin, but met him in Nevada). See the 15th photo from the bottom of this post:
http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/
Finns
I think Machu Picchu should be lovely on November 5th. Cheer up. Hillary has got the Health Secretary job sewn up. It will the first day of the rest of your life. And I don’t have to read that Perfumed Garden book. And Jen is missing you.
cote? errr make that vote
Geez I hope not – Sec of State or nothing. Really should stay in the Senate and take up Ted Kennedy’s role of the 80s and 90s.
Hear, hear, hear
Grog, that is EXACTLY why she will likely get the SOH job. She is going to inherit Kennedy’s mantle as the Senator who oversees and looks after health issues. What better place to do that then oversee the implementation of what will for the US pose as Universal Health Care? (I don’t for a minute believe that it will look anything like the Aussie version but for the USA, it will be a start, and boy do they need it. They have to fund UHC for many many more times a population than does Australia)
When the dominoes start falling, they fall fast and heavy …
Grog @ 291 [Really should stay in the Senate and take up Ted Kennedy’s role of the 80s and 90s.]
Yes, I think that is the safest place for her, and is also her competency ceiling. At least no-one is still suggesting that she should be appointed to the Supreme Court as some compadres here were some months ago when in the full bloom of their genuine disappointment after she stuffed up the primaries. That would be a disaster.
Sounds like he lost a heap of cash on the stock market, and is now sniffing around for a job in the next administration.
a very jaundiced view that.
Just for kicks, show of hands, who can name more than 2 other members of the Cabinet besides Rice and Paulson?
Grog, I gave up keeping track of the cabinet of the US when I left the country. I wouldn’t be able to do it without cheating and looking on Wikipedia, so sorry
Grog 297 – I Fail. Got stumped after Gates. Do you think Hillary would be more visible in the role of Health Secretary than Michael O. Leavitt is?
Here are all the temporary seat warmers:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/government/cabinet.html
My point – the US cabinet is like asking us who are the Secretaries of the Departments. (aside from Sec of State, and the Treasury when things go to poo)
Hillary would be more visable, but eventually the anonymity of the job would tak eover – you can’t be prominant if you’re just a one issue person – unless that issue is for affairs or the economy.
I doubt she’d take SoH. But not based on any real info or knowledge
Maybe Hillary could take a public service job at the equivalent of our SES. Prepare policy advice for, say,the Justice Secretary, that sort of thing, using her limited legal background.
Link to a great story in the New Yorker re elections and voting through the ages. Via Mumble.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/10/13/081013fa_fact_lepore?currentPage=all
God Fox News is full of blowhards. They invite Hitchens on to talk about his endorsement, then the silly woman won’t even let him speak:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/20/christopher-hitchens-mcca_n_136351.html
The talking head on Fox just said that Biden is the most inexperienced VP candidate ever.
I don’t know how these people keep a straight face.
I honestly thought it would take them until next week until they started scraping the bottom of the barrel.
Just watch Keith Olbermann instead:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/20/keith-olbermann-special-c_n_136385.html
Now a talking head on CNN says that Sarah Palin may represent the future of the Republican party.
Looks like the Dems may be in for a long time.
Like anyone who seriously watches Fox hasn’t made up their mind already who they are voting for lol
kakuru @ 232,
Correct. Missouri is more Macarthur than Eden-Monaro.
But if Obama wins handily, he’ll snag Missouri. Just as Labor nearly won Macarthur last year.
I don’t quite understand the obsession some have with trying to find a spot for Hillary Clinton in an Obama cabinet. What’s wrong with her current job?
Yeah, keep her in the Senate I reckon. Obama will need a strong figure there.
David W – It goes back to the end of the primaries – and we saw it on PB – a desire to give Hillary a consolation prize, something, anything, among those who believed she should win the nomination. I agree that she should be satisfied with where she is at the Senate, having been fortunate enough to be elected only because of a certain high office held by her husband.
It has to be said though, once she came to terms with the loss she has well and truly stumped for Obama
She’d probably want something like Ambassador to the U.N. So whenever there is a major international crisis she’d be on TV talking at the security council.
Palin opposes McCain’s stand on gay marriage:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27285822/
It is interesting that she doesn’t even mention that they should be “consenting adults”. I also note that according to her definition of marriage it would be legal for parents to marry their adult children, and for brothers and sisters to marry each other.
Gotta love those ’small town values’… you betcha
Rasmussen unchanged
Obama 50
McCain 46
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/election_20082/2008_presidential_election/daily_presidential_tracking_poll
Hotline/Diageo (unconfirmed)
Obama 47 (steady)
McCain 41 (down 1)
GWU/Battleground with some very interesting numbers…
Obama 48 (down 1)
McCain 47 (up 2)
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/RCP_PDF/BG_102008_2-way-ballot-trender.pdf
These polls are all over the place
theres certainly some sort of tightening going on, the battleground state polls have yet to reflect that though
i guess its only natural for the polls to tighten – should be motivation for the dems to fight as hard as they can
Public Policy Polling: Obama leads 48-46 in Indiana.
Well, ever so gradually. Just the movements of the trackers so far today though…
Zogby: +2 to Obama
Rasmussen: unchanged
Battleground: +3 to McCain
Hotline: +1 to Obama
Giving a +1, +4, +6 and a +8 to Obama. Quite a spread…
That’s the first poll in 2 weeks out of Indiana… but RCP doesn’t include PPP though so their average stays at +3.8% McCain. Be very interesting to see if we get any other polls out of there soon.
It should be noted that Battleground has gone from +13 to +1 Obama in just 7 days. I just don’t buy that kind of movement against all the other tracking polls. Either they’re playing silly buggers with their internals or they have something very wierd going on.
Some fun
The Republicrats
http://originals.msn.com/republicrats/
Civitas Institute/Tel Opinion Research: Obama 48, McCain 45 in North Carolina. Obama has also won the crucial endorsement of Sir Boris Johnsons.
In the interests of partisan balance, I hereby reprint a comment from the thread below the Boris Johnson article.
Public Policy Polling: Obama 48, McCain 47 in Florida.
You gotta lurrv this Palin chick, just look at how she appoints her cabinet in the wilds of Alaska:
Palin Hired a High School Friend With No Experience to Head the State Division of Agriculture – a $95,000 Per Year Job. “So when there was a vacancy at the top of the State Division of Agriculture, she appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to the $95,000-a-year directorship. A former real estate agent, Ms. Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as one of her qualifications for running the roughly $2 million agency.” [New York Times, 9/14/08 ]
OH…..MY……GOD, and she could be a heartbeat away from the red button!
jaundiced view @ 303
“I agree that she should be satisfied with where she is at the Senate, having been fortunate enough to be elected only because of a certain high office held by her husband.”
How completely insulting.
jaundiced view @ 303
“I agree that she should be satisfied with where she is at the Senate, having been fortunate enough to be elected only because of a certain high office held by her husband.”
How completely insulting.
ltep, nothing at all wrong with that. under normal circumstances, i.e with he not having been POTUS, she would not have made the jump from first lady in Arkansas to New York Senator.
How do you know that?
ltep @ 334,
since you assume yourself to be a smart *** bloke, would you care to enter our presidential EV guessing contest for the election?
I’m sure you would be able to put your grey matter to work and come up with a nice potential vote total for John McCain.
We need his EV total please for you to enter.
Put yourself on the line if you dare.
Pew Research Poll:
Obama 53
McCain 39
Today’s TPM Election Central website daily tracking poll summary:
Composite: Obama’s Lead Expands Again
By Eric Kleefeld – October 21, 2008, 5:10PM
Here’s our daily composite of the six major national tracking polls. Barack Obama continues to lead John McCain by a healthy margin, with a slight dip in McCain’s support today:
• Gallup: Obama 52%, McCain 42%, with a ±2% margin of error, compared to a 52%-43% Obama lead yesterday.
• Rasmussen: Obama 50%, McCain 46%, with a ±2% margin of error, unchanged from yesterday.
• ABC/Washington Post: Obama 53%, McCain 44%, with a ±3% margin of error, the same as yesterday’s numbers. This is the second day of the ABC/WaPo tracking poll, and the first day we’re including it in the Composite.
• Hotline/Diageo: Obama 47%, McCain 41%, with a ±3.4% margin of error, compared to a 47%-42% Obama lead from yesterday.
• Research 2000: Obama 50%, McCain 42%, with a ±3% margin of error, unchanged from yesterday.
• Zogby: Obama 50%, McCain 42%, with a ±2.9% margin of error, compared to a 50%-44% Obama lead yesterday.
Palin thinks the V.P. is “in charge” of the Senate:
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/10/21/palin-vp-senate/
Even Cheney isn’t that moronic.
JJ,
what is the WORST thing one of your Republican relatives has said to you during the election campaign so far? I got a doozy today from my sister in MO and sorry, before I share my shocker, wanted to hear any you might have first?
…..
ShowsOn, anyone worth their salt in US schools learns that in basic civic or history classes and in most states, that is a required class in high school. I am not up on my Palin background details, does anyone know which state she grew UP in? So which state she would have attended her secondary school in?
NBC/WALL STREET JOURNAL Poll:
Obama 52
McCain 42
Kentucky Senate Poll:
Republicans 48
Democrats 48
She was born in Idaho, but went to high school in Alaska.
Julie,
Before our Election Blackout went into action back in July, my brother out of the blue emailed that FoxNews (his favourite channel, natch) reported how Barack O’bama smokes two packs of cigs a day followed by my brother’s comment: “What a real poster boy for good health!”
I emailed back: “Can I take it, then, that this means you won’t be voting for Obama after all?” No reply to this question was forthcoming.
I’m most curious to hear your Worst Repub. relative comment.
To keep this post on topic, here’s a couple of salient points about the flurry of polls which have been published this week from Nate Silver @ 538.com today:
“What we may have witnessed is some sort of dead cat bounce for John McCain. One possibility is that, as more voters are taking advantage of early voting windows across the country, the pollsters are finding that some voters whom they considered “unlikely” voters have in fact turned out to vote. Zogby gives Obama a 21-point lead nationwide among people who have already voted, and SurveyUSA and Civitas peg his advantage among early voters in North Carolina at around 20 and 30 points, respectively.
At the same time, between state and national polls, we are now seeing something like 30 sets of numbers released each day. Probability dictates that there are going to be a couple of outliers in each day’s sample. If we’re going to tout the Pew results, we probably ought to mention the latest results from GWU/Battleground, which have McCain down by just one point. Generally speaking, with this much data to look at, the rule of thumb is that when a poll looks like an outlier, it probably is one.”
The polls really are all over the place today with Obama lead widening on RCP average to 7.2% (faithfully reported by Drudge BTW). The polls vary from a 1% lead to a 14% lead which really makes you wonder about their methodology.
The ARG poll in WV was clearly flawed and it’s not in play (Rasm now 9% lead to McCain). NC, NV and Indiana are all toss-ups. Most importantly, CO stays nice and blue at 5% lead.
342,
ShowsOn, will try to dig into their requirements, if any later today, thanks
It’s amazing that Indiana, a solid red state, is a tossup!
JJ @ 343,
Regarding Bear found dumped at WCU with Obama signs, I received this in my inbox when I woke up today ….
You can’t pick your relatives ………………….
Yeah, there’s some funny business going on. My guess is it’s still around a 4-6% Obama lead, but frankly who knows
There was a poll out yesterday showing Obama up there by 2, which is a statistical tie. But still very promising.
No Republican has won the Presidency without winning Indiana.
Pollster.com has flipped Florida from lean Obama, to tossup. But even if McCain wins ALL of the toss-up states (including Florida), Obama would still win!
http://www.pollster.com/
Julie, Thanks for sharing your pain!
That was a classic Sarah Palin reverse-spin comment from the “Real” America. Birds of a feather, eh? In this case, galahs!
Here’s a cheery comment from 538.com:
Obama’s biggest lead ever in the Gallup likely voter poll (10 points).
Obama’s biggest lead ever in the Pew Research poll (14 points).
Obama’s biggest lead ever in the NBC/WSJ poll (10 points).
Obama’s biggest lead ever in the CNN poll of polls (9 points).
jj, thankfully those folks are in the minority this time around. Won’t it be a sweet day in 2 weeks?
………
Another Palin clanger. Still doesn’t know what the VP does… thought it meant she would be in charge of the Senate. Truly unbelievable.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/21/bill-maher-palin-a-real-b_n_136684.html
Comment today from states-only-polling aggregator ( current median E.V. is Obama 364 to McCain 174 with Meta-Margin of Obama +6.6%), Prof. Sam Wang at Princeton Election Consortium:
“Considering that national polls have an error of at least one percentage point, at this point you are better off following the Meta-Analysis, whose effective error is much smaller. The tradeoff between speed (national) and accuracy (Meta-Analysis) is gone. At this site you now get both.
At this point I am not expecting the outcome to move more than about 15 EV from the current median. What I’m really watching for is some fresh Senate polling data, especially in Mississippi and Kentucky.”
Ole Miss and Kentuck! WTF!
Julie,
Sweet as… now, let me think………… oh, yes, now I remember………..Australia Federal Election, November, K ‘07.
Whadya’ think about Nate Silver’s take that some pollsters are altering their likely voter screens based on the early voting numbers showing more new voters in the mix?
She was trying to make a joke! Also, the third grade student who asked the question was obviously practicing “gotcha journalism”.
But Palin isn’t going home empty handed, the Republicans have spent $150,000 on her clothes and accessories. That makes a couple of lobsters (which were never ordered) look like chump change.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1008/14805.html
Dario,
Good Call on the Veep’s Senate role. For those who don’t know, the Veep’s only power there is to cast the deciding vote in case of a tie, so Cheney would rarely have been in the Senate Chamber (except to utter foul language at Dems).
It’s the elected Senate Majority and Minority Leaders and extremely powerful committee chairpersons who cut the deals. That’s why the Dems put up with Sen. Lieberman since 2006 election. It was worth it to have all the committee chairs then, but he will be burnt toast (bagel?) in the next Senate.
I wish they would just leave the numbers alone. I don’t want a false sense of security!
If Obama is up on the RCP average by 5% on election day, then that will equate to a huge landslide.
I don’t have too much of an opinion I guess on it …. off topic to the US election, but I’ve got multiple Ebay auctions [as a seller] going off today so the majority of my mental energy is wrapped around that today.
I guess if I had anything to say about polls at all, it would be that there are enough dodgy ones out there that I don’t think you can take any one poll as gospel because the one you are looking at might be the dodgy one. Probably best to take the general polling trend and that clearly shows Obama in front ….. overall numbers aren’t as important as the EV numbers [ as 2000 clearly showed the US citizens ] so I’ve used the RCP EV maps over time as my guide for comfort as opposed to polls
……
He will probably become a Republican.
[What will he [Lieberman] do post-election, especially given his unwavering early support for McCain? And more importantly, what will Democrats do with this man they regard as a political traitor who has bashed their presidential pick? Will they strip him of his chairmanship on the Homeland Security Committee, this man who gave them their majority status following the very difficult 2006 election?
Senior Democratic sources have told FOX News that if Democrats get 56 or 57 seats, they will dump Lieberman. That number, gauging by Tuesday’s polling, certainly seems possible. ]
http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/10/21/reporters-notebook-senate-republicans-brace-election-day-sorrows/
Not only is Lieberman supporting McCain, but he is also supporting the Republican nominee for the Senate in Connecticut. So Lieberman is actively trying to stop the Democrats from getting to 60!
http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/shays_connecticut_/2008/10/21/142707.html
Interesting take on campaigning in the US election
….
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hroslyn/2962076406/
ShowsOn: “I wish they would just leave the numbers alone. I don’t want a false sense of security!”
ShowsOn, you are invariably sound in your reasoning, so I’m mystified by that comment. How does updating your 2004 screen to reflect what’s actually observed in 2008 constitute a “false sense”?
Not being snarky, here. Just curious.
McCain losing it, exhibit 32342:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLVSURlFoQs
Julie, Good luck with your Ebay sales (have you got an airplane among your items?)
Showson, Thanks for the helpful Lieberman links.
Because maybe you over predict the Democrat turn out. Or maybe some of those voters are Democrats who are going to vote for McCain.
It makes sense to me to minimising any of these things that can cause major variations in the results. Does anyone actually think Obama is going to win by 14%, like the Pew poll suggests? He would win something like 500 electoral votes if he won by that much.
Here’s another comprehensive article:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/10/21/lieberman/
He’s just an embarassment
I couldn’t agree with you more that I disagree with the agreement that I disagree with.
In another part of the speech, McCain noted the success of Thomas Dewey in the 1948 election. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/chi-chicagodays-deweydefeats-story,0,6484067.story
363,
JJ, no no airplane …. Just selling a heap of Yu-Gi-Oh! cards …..
Another nail in the supposed anti-corruption/earmarks/whatever credentials of Palin
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081021/ap_on_el_pr/palin_family_travel
For the those sitting in the Obama corner, it is time we thought about music to listen to while the election returns are coming in on Wednesday the 5th?
….. I’m in the midst of compiling my own list [not just US music, some Aussie ones in there too, probably some Brits before I am done] (currently at 11) and when I think I’ve found all that I want to put on it, I’ll post it, it might give others out there some ideas …..
This video explains why the McCain campaign says it isn’t over in Colorado:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EgwNvhZr30
If they concede it is over in Colorado, then there is basically no way they can win without winning a Kerry state. Personally I think this graph shows that it IS over in Colorado: http://www.pollster.com/polls/co/08-co-pres-ge-mvo.php
McCain has flat lined, he just hasn’t moved any higher there for the last MONTH. How is he going to turn that around in 2 weeks?
McCain would be better of going through Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida.
Juliem, i’m thinking a constant cycle of Bob Dylan’s “the time’s, they are a changin…” ,”Rockin in the Free World” (Neil young?) and “Born in the USA” by the Boss….
And perhaps, even that ditty that Will.I.Am did with all the famous folk of the ‘Yes We Can’ speech…
Of course you could always do what I did last November….put on the Gun’s n Roses “paradise city’ and jump drunkenly around your living room….
Yo ho ho,
I’m still working on my list but forgot about the Bob Dylan song, I’ve added it. I want to keep adding songs until I feel I’ve gotten all of the best ones. I already had Bruce and that song too. Consider this one too – Little River Band “Cool Change”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xslO6Qi_kGQ
Guns and Roses, eh? will have to check that one out, that isn’t normally my genre
… I can’t hit the hard stuff beyond one glass of wine until later on in the evening as I can’t set a bad example for my kids 
ShowsOn @ 349,
Looking at Indiana’s electoral history, the Democrats have only carried the state on eight occasions.
Your statement is incorrect though, since Republican Rutherford Hayes failed to carry Indiana but still won the presidency (however dubiously) in 1876.
Juliem….
Gunners is not usually my choice either, but that song will forever be linked to the moment Julia acknowledged that the good guys were definately getting up….
And the alcohol thing is probably a fair call. The results will start coming in at what 10am EDT? Probably a little early for me too!
It might be better to stay relatively sober, so one truly enjoys the historic moment.
Afterwards I’ll get very pissed LOL
We are Family – Sister Sledge
Paint the White House Black – Funkadelic
One Nation Under a Groove – Funkadelic
People Get Ready – Curtis Mayfield
Luncheon with the President – Vince Jones
The Power of Equality – Red Hot Chili Peppers
Give the People What They Want – The O’Jays
Superstition – Stevie Wonder
People Lead – Ben Harper
Excuse Me Mr – Ben Harper
What’s Going On – Marvin Gaye
Pride – Living Colour
The Times They Are A-Changin’ – Bob Dylan
Unity – The O’Jays
Renegades of Funk – Rage Against the Machine
Power to the People – Joe Henderson (Some 1970s Jazz)
Obama is a huge Miles Davis fan, so if he wins, I’ll play RIGHT OFF from Miles’ album “Tribute to Jack Johnson” REALLY, REALLY loud which is an album dedicated to the first black heavy weight boxing champion.
Going to be a fair few headaches around the country here on Thursday the 6th
Julie, the hangover will be worth it – remember November 25,2007?
Great selections! Totally forgot them.
For anyone looking for a laugh, try this website:
http://www.whitehouse.org/
WARNING, some may find this extremely offensive, but I think it is hilarious. The funniest section is the feedback emails, where a lot of people think it is the actual official White House website:
http://www.whitehouse.org/feedback/47.asp
381, remember it well
….. I wasn’t hung over but I woke up and thought to myself, is it for real? Checked the news and yes, it sure was 
.
I linked this a few weeks ago but I love it. It’s Neil Young singing Rockin’ in the Free World set to Fahrenheit 9/11.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynHpOg5ZkuQ
Another favourite is this cover of Tomorrow Wendy by Concrete Blond.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO6qrtSTkew
The narrowing has finished. The Obama surge seems to be back on track. Even Zogby think so. More importantly Pew (Registered:52/38, Likely: 53/39) do.
Apparently the New York Times will soon break a major story on the disasterous McCain campaign – in the next few days! Something to do with Palin being forced on McCain
Sorry, I’m catching up late to the Lieberman issue…
It’d be a silly move for Lieberman to jump ship to the Republicans, simply because Connecticut is a very blue state. Sure, Lieberman isn’t up for re-election until 4 years from now, which coincides with the next presidential election – and the Dems may not be as popular as they are now. But Conn will still be a very blue state.
GOP senators from New England are becoming increasingly rare (RI fell two years ago, and NH is looking very wobbly this time round – though the two very moderate GOP senators from Maine look to be on safer ground). As an Independent, Lieberman can court voters on both sides of the fence (as he did in ‘06). But running as an undisguised Repug is a dangerous strategy in a state as deep blue as Conn.
Still, I think Lieberman might just switch anyway, because he’s burnt so many bridges this election season. Very strange behaviour.
Shame on those Democats in Conneticut who voted for Liberman last time – he’s a traitor of the worst sort. The GOP can have him, particularly as their senatorial ranks hopefully will be massively depleted in 2 weeks time.
Major cuts in ad spending by McCain in Colorado, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Maine and Minnesota… they’re pulling back big time
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/21/mccains-camp-shaves-its-ad-targets/
Julie: I want Obama to do a skit with Tina Fey, the real Sarah Palin
Re 388, sorry posted the wrong link, I’ve too many windows open
… it should be …
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/21/obama-on-snl-rumors-swirl_n_136709.html
Not that it will make much difference
So Dario, McSlime has given up on Colorado – isn’t that a concession of defeat?
Has he? I heard Palin was campaigning there today.
I seem to remember some very poor commentary on the weekend from two Obamaphobes at this site. They had indiscriminately fallen for Rush Limbaugh’s attack on Michelle Obama about the lobster, caviar and champagne snack. The story looked very bogus, which I pointed out. Surprise, surprise, it turns out that I was right (yet again) and that they had fallen for a lie and were wrong (yet again).
The fact that intelligent people will fall for anything if it confirms their world view is of great concern to me. There is none as blind as he who will not see.
http://www.nypost.com/seven/10212008/gossip/pagesix/room_disservice_134490.htm
I would play only 1 song, and that would be to all the McCain and Palin rednecks and it would be…You’ve Got Nothing I Want by Cold Chisel.
ShowsOn, I’m a huge fan of Funkadelic and Ben Harper. Agree with the choice of Excuse Me Mr, played that really loud as Howard went down.
It’s been known for months that McCain wanted Tom Ridge, Lieberman, Colin Powell, or Arlen Spector as V.P. The problem is they are all moderates, and all support choice on abortion.
The new info is going to relate to the fact McCain’s campaign is a disorganised joke.
They’re reducing their ad buys, presumably to focus on PA. Given how far behind they seem to be in Colorado already I reckon that’s as good as conceding it.
I think a lot of people who did support him didn’t realise he would actively oppose Obama, let alone the Democrat running for the Senate!
Thing is, he may have lost even worse with one of those picks. The base would have stayed at home.
Dio @ 396, not all intelligent people will fall for anything. I saw an article today that purported to claim that Cheney had endorsed Obama. It seemed legit enough but I did my own research and tried to first confirm it via other sites and also read the comments following the article. It turned out to be a tongue in cheek article that wasn’t true ……
Obama has already raised $133 million this month. At this rate he will break his own record of 150 in one month.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20081021/campaign-money/
This new strategy of relying on Pennsylvania to get him over the line is crazy!
Wouldn’t it be smarter to put all your resources into retaining every state Bush won in 2004?
Well, McCain is known as quite a gambler, and PA does have 21 EV’s
A bit hard to do that when Obama already has Iowa (in front by about 10) and New Mexico in the bag.
McCain is basically at the point where he needs to go Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, and just HOPE that he somehow wins Nevada and Colorado, and that he ends up winning Missouri narrowly. (It’s only worth 11 votes, so his time is better spent in Virginia and North Carolinia, and of course Ohio which is worth 20)
McCain’s team has clearly targetted PA from very early on as a potential pick-up. The 21 EV’s would cancel out at least two red states going blue eg IA, NM and NV. It was probably a good strategy two months ago but it has clearly flopped. History is full of bad decisions which are perpetuated by the refusal to take account of new information.
Unless the polling is wrong, I don’t see how McCain can win Pennsylvania!
Both Gore and Kerry carried it, I can’t see it flipping to the red state column this time.
As i recall Bush did come close in 2004 in PA. Granted that was 2004 but still he came within 160,000 votes.
50.92 Kerry
48.42 Bush
Still it is not looking good.
But at least we have Canada.
And Glen, you’ll probably have Kiwi Land soon also!
Sure, but it is certainly a sign of desperation at this stage. I just don’t know how he turns around this http://www.pollster.com/polls/pa/08-pa-pres-ge-mvo.php in two weeks.
And it was a defensive strategy anyway – ‘If we can win in PA, then we can afford to lose 2 other states’. That sounds like a campaign that KNOWS it is about to lose.
The real problem seems to be a geographic one. There is so little time left that McCain can’t afford to go to Nevada and Colorado, even though he is at a stage where he needs both of them to win. He has to stay in the mid-west and east to sure up support in Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina.
That is true. Key will most likely win in NZ. But the USA is more important!
We should get the UK back too eventually.
Oh well we had 8 years of Bush it is awfully hard for any Party to win more than 8 years in office McCain regardless of Bushs popularity was always going to be up against it.
Yeah, where the OTHER Obama lives.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4676754a6160.html
Interesting to see others choices of music. It is a wonderful commentary on the variety of music out there and reflects on our ages as well as the musical environment we grew up in. I’ve got a few on my list so far that are in common with some of you and a few I’ve added based upon others suggestions. I don’t feel that my list is done yet but this is what I have so far:
Queen: We are the Champions
MatchBox20: Lets see how far we’ve come
Hunters and Collectors: Holy Grail
ACDC: It’s a long way to the top
Neil Young: Rockin in the Free World
Bruce Springsteen: Born in the USA
Billy Joel: The River of Dreams
Jefferson Starship: We built this City
Boston: Don’t Look Back
Stevie Wonder: Signed, sealed, delivered
Elton John: Can you feel the Love tonight?
(for Democrats who have spent 8 years suffering in the political wilderness, this one is quite appropriate, but you probably have to look at this YouTube link to appreciate it if you haven’t heard this one before – http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=uCebAa9qKz8 ) {second p.s to this one for those who don’t know, this song won the Academy Award for a song from a movie the year it was eligible}
Little River Band: Cool Change
Fleetwood Mac: Go Your Own Way
Bob Dylan: The Times they are a changing
ELO: Hold On Tight
Kiss: Rock n Roll All Night
Cold Chisel: You’ve got nothing I want
Crowded House: Don’t Dream its Over
Yeah and weren’t those eight years of Bush FANTASTIC!
Face it, his administration has been big government conservative at its absolute worst. Even worse than John Howard.
He is one of those Reganites who says that Government is bad, then gets into Government to prove how exactly bad it can be. It takes a lot of stupidity to have two of the worst secretaries of all time in the same cabinet (Rumsfeld and Gonzalez).
Palin apologises for her abject stupidity:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/21/palin-apologizes-for-real_n_136665.html
In other news, she still believes earth is less than 7000 years old.
McCain can’t be that short of cash – his campaign organisation has spent $150,000 on Palin’s clothes
“In other news, she still believes earth is less than 7000 years old.”
About the same age as McCain, then.
ShowsOn that is spurious, because Obama also believes the earth is less than 7000 years old!
You Tories can have Canada and NZ. I’ll be happy with the US. (And Australia too.)
And don’t count on the UK flipping next time round. Although Labour has been bloodied in a few byelections, they have a hefty majority in the Commons, and Brown has looked good during the financial crisis.
New Zogby due out in a few hours apparently has Obama +10 today (up 2)
A big lurch to Obama in RCP (he’s above 50 per cent for only the second time) combined with the 48-46 PPP poll has put Indiana in the Obama column for the first time since I started doing this.
Rubbish! He believes in evolution, human evolution can’t work in just 7000 years.
Sounds like a negative narrowing.
If there is a big lurch to Obama, I wonder if the comments by Palin and McCain about which parts of America are “pro or anti, may be backfiring bigtime.
That means it has gone up by 2.5% in about 2 days. I’d say that means the Powell endorsement, and the continued attack ads are helping Obama.
I believe the biggest gap was 8.2% on 1 week ago, it looks like it is headed back to that pre-third debate level.
60% of people think the Ayres attack is irrelevant, compared to high 30s who says it is. So that means the Republicans are only polling about 5% more than their hardcore base.
South Dakota Poll:
McCain 47
Obama 41
Rubbish Obama believes in God he is religious just ask his pastor and they all believe the world in 7000 years old so your argument is weak ShowsOn!
Er, no they don’t
I would be petrified if I had a plane trip like these polls.
Not for the fainted hearted traveler.
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=5X_7Xt2ga-s&feature=related
This is rubbish even by your standards Glen. SOME religous people believe in a LITERAL reading of their sacred texts which makes them conclude that earth is somewhere between 5000 – 10000 years old. These are known as “young earth creationists”. However, many other religious people concede that the earth, and the universe, is much, much older, even if they choose to believe that it was somehow supernaturally created, or at the very least initiated.
Mickey Kaus made a bizarre dig at Australians in a recent blog post:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/kausfiles/archive/2008/10/19/hello-we-hate-to-interrupt.aspx
Feel free to send him hate mail:
Mickey_Kaus@msn.com
From pollster PPP:
http://publicpolicypolling.blogspot.com/2008/10/coming-up.html
I voted for Montana as the extra state to poll. I think Washington state is in the bag.
McCain needs to get undecided voters to break for him big, but these voters are male, older, moderate to conservative and see him as being different from Bush. Speculation should focus on these voters.
…and to think guys, if Gore won, it would be Lieberman who’ll be the candidate atm..and presumably many of us would be supporting him? =S
Interesting changes the past 8 years…
Even if they break 2:1 Obama will still probably win. Obama is way in front.
Too many unknowns in here to even bother speculating.
Me too, but there is a tight Governor’s race in Washington
ShowsOn,
Was it you who was going to be in Chicago on Election night?
If it wasn’t, then whomever that was, this is for you …
SNIP: Foul-mouthed comment deleted – The Management.
While he meant it originally for Aussie consumption (i.e clearly describing Aborigines), the MO song “One Country” could be useful on Election Wednesday as well
. It is going onto my list …..
Julie,
If I can only hear one song from the time polls close until the moment when the outcome is 100% certain, then it would be:
“That’s the way it is.” by Bruce Hornsby and the Range (1986)
” That’s just the way it is, some things will never change, that’s just the …”
Julian…
A musician mate of mine once told me that song largely consists of what he termed ’stationary’ chords (i.e. they are all major chords so don’t sound like they need to resolve to a major chord like many minor chords do). So basically, by happy coincidence or not, he was reinforcing the message of his tune….
As tipped earlier, Zogby has moved out to Obama +10
Obama 52 (up 2)
McCain 42 (steady)
http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1604
Thanks Juliem – it was me.
I’m planning to be there – although it will be bloody cold!!!
Re: Undecided voters. I expect they will break for McCain precisely like they broke for Howard in the last week of our ‘07 election. Even the Jackie Kelly leaflet fiasco in Penrith didn’t stop Howard from pulling out 47.3% 2PP when it was possible the Coalition were looking down the barrel of a 1975/1977 level rout two or three weeks out from polling day.
Obviously, what matters is where the undecided votes are located. What good did it do for Howard that the proverbial “doctor’s wives” of North Sydney in the end decided to vote Joe Hockey back up to a far more comfortable margin of victory than he was sweating about at the start of the campaign?
So, I’m perfectly happy for McCain to rack up a few million more undecided votes going to waste in non-battleground states which have received the least (if any) advertising/candidate rallies/ground game staff and, consequently, I’d surmise a fairly high % of the total undecided voters remaining.
Moreover, those few downticket congress races that undecideds impact upon won’t matter a whole lot because they’re only adding a few more House seats to an already comfortable Dem. majority and Democrats have only a slim chance of reaching 60 Senators. Too many of the new Senators would be “mavericky” Blue-dogs who can’t be relied upon to vote with the Dem. Party on the big-ticket issues and supreme court appointments anyway.
SwingLowe,
AH, but you will be warm inside
…… from someone who has been through many a cold night in the USofA, can I suggest under these circumstances a nice smallish bottle (that can be easily pocketed in an interior pocket of your coat) of Southern Comfort straight up? 
…. that will hit the spot and warm you up. Oh; also serving the purpose of warming you up and will work just as well – sake, ouzo or vodka.
I want a full report when you return
…. when are you leaving and when are you back? 
Yo Ho Ho,
Wow! Thanks for the education on my favorite song’s chords. I’m a musical ignoramus, but Yes, I can dig it!
Swing Lowe @ 448
And windy. I lived there for a year.
I’m leaving for the US on Saturday and I’m back on 9th Nov. However, I will attempt to blog throughout that period.
That said, I will now apologise in advance for any drunken posts on the night of 4th November (5th November in Australia) – I’m laying the blame squarely on juliem and her “warming up” strategy
jjulian1009@449. Howard may have got the undecideds from other electorates, but the electorate that the pamphlets were distributed in, Lindsay, swung 10% to the ALP. This is my electorate.
JJ and Sondeo,
by that logic, NC ought to stay blue, it was blue the last time I checked on RCP (although still considered a tossup state, so marginally Obama) ……
And I want to take a moment to say to the New York Times in the USA, thanks for coming to the party
……..
453,
SwingLowe, that advice comes from years of attending college football games
in single digit Celcius temps and windchills in the below zero Celcius range. There should NOT be snow that early but you never know? Estimate only 5% chance that early in the season.
Best rule of thumb, but you probably already know this
….. if you are too far gone to use proper spelling and grammar, you probably ought not be online 
….
I am well aware of this rule, but I am afraid that I have already broken it.
When I was in Munich for Oktoberfest last year, I am ashamed to admit that I drunkenly blogged on the upcoming Australian election after a rather big night out. Hopefully, none of those old posts were transferred when WB switched the Crikey…
Ok, baseball in the US is in their season ending series now to determine the champion. This (follows) won’t go over well in the US. You can well imagine what would happen here in Australia if during the Federal Election campaign last year one of either Howard or Rudd had said “I’m not dumb enough to make that choice” …
The Supreme Court is coming to the party as well
…
Has the internet, blogging and Youtube killed Rovian/Ronian politics? Instant fact-checking, videos of gaffes etc blunt any lying attacks. The facts can smother fires set by smear tactics.
The Internet and the Death of Rovian Politics
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/the-internet-and-the-deat_b_136400.html?view=print
Anyone got a heads up on whether the election night coverage will be broadcast on Australian FTA?
I don’t see why it would be. I actually find the thought of that quite objectionable.
459 juliem – how stupid of McCain – it doesn’t mean he isn’t “dumb enough”, it just means he doesn’t have any balls.
Why ltep?
If we do not get coverage of UK, NZ, Indonesian etc. elections I don’t know why we’d get live coverage of the US election.
We don’t have many TV shows from NZ, Indonesia either (or UK on non-ABC)
Cool, just curious… didnt know whether SBS or ABC might pick up a stream, seeing as they showed the debates. Even for the first few hours of the count.
It will be over pretty quickly anyway injuddstree
Grog… what difference does that make?
Injuddstree, I’m sure there will be lots of coverage on the election results on the ABC website. I’m sure there will be internet feeds somewhere of election coverage as well.
SBS will have a 3 hour show starting at 3.30pm on the 5/11/2008. I’m not sure what time voting finishes and counting starts Aust time. juliem might be able to help out there.
Here’s the link.
http://www.sbs.com.au/schedule/2008-11-5/SBS%20Television
ltep – I was just pointing out that as most of what is on Australian TV is from the US – and more broadly, how much an impact the US political situation has on Australia – why shouldn’t it be on.
I’d rather the TV channels show the US election than another episode of Two and Half Men. If we’re goign to see US TV, at least let it be something that matters.
If the NZ election suddenly has a big impact on the Australian economy and foreign policy then they should show it.. but until then…
459 juliem – just saw Jon Stewart it looks like Obama is backing both teams!
Who leads the US has little impact on the Australian economy and should have no impact on our foreign policy.
should is different than does. (unfortunately) – and given it’ll be on during the day, what would we be missing out on? Kerrie Anne??
Actually I’ll be at work, so I’ll be hitting the CNN site most likely.
10am eastern Australian time on Wed 5th is when the ballots on the east coast of the USA close, so should expect solid coverage to start from then I reckon. Will hopefully pick up a stream from somewhere
Florida Governor stated on Fox news tonight that the latest Rasmussem poll (for Florida) has McCain one point in front.
Darn
Mondays Rasm was 1% to McCain.
The viewers are switching off indicating that they know it’s over and have lost interest. This from Drudge. I think William can sympathise with the viewers.
Research 2000 national tracking poll unchanged at Obama +10
Obama 51 (down 1)
McCain 41 (down 1)
http://www.dailykos.com/dailypoll/2008/10/22
Sondeo @ 471,
The polls close at different times in different places. I.e, even though many states are in the eastern time zone, they don’t all close at the same time and within a state sometimes they close at different times. I’ve got a file somewhere on my computer and more information but I can’t find it at this hour. Check back in tomorrow and I’ll get you as much information as I can find
[ unless someone else beats me to it 
] { been watching a movie tonight and turning in now }
Cheers
Maybe ABC or SBS will put the election night program on one of their digital/HD channels?
I think I saw an SBS ad today that said they would have full coverage on their regular channel. My guess is the ABC would as well.
http://www.tvtonight.com.au/2008/09/us-presidential-election-coverage-on-sbs.html
Guess who has an exam the next day…
3.30 PM? It’ll be almost over by then!
The first polls will close at 10.00 AM(Eastern Standard Time) in Australia
And I wouldn’t count on the ABC either
We’ll need cable TV and/or the internet for any decent live coverage
Obama passes 85 for the first time on Intrade, he is on 85.4.
McCain has sunk under 15 for the first time, he is on 14.6.
Taken from http://www.electoral-vote.com/
Those 6 points are all accurate, but that articles attempt to project ‘guru’ Charlie Cook as some kind of prophet are laughable. I don’t recall any point in time where Giuliani was considered the ‘inevitable’ nominee and predicted that he wouldn’t win was hardly a rare opinion.
So the fact that I didn’t think Giuliani would win and the fact that I didn’t win the Tour de France means I get a certain amount of credit? Yay.
Yeah even I predicted it! I felt there was no way a pro-choice, pro gay marriage guy who has publicly cross-dressed multiple times would ever appeal to the Republican establishment.
They had to hold their noses pretty hard to support McCain, and the price was making him pal around with Palin.
Sportsbet – Obama still $1.07, McCain out to $8.00.l
Hillary would’ve been on 27 cents.
(Yes I realise this is nonsensical)
Obama has shot up to 86 on Intrade.
Rasmussen national tracking poll moves out to Obama +6 (up 2)
Obama 51 (up 1)
McCain 45 (down 1)
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/election_20082/2008_presidential_election/daily_presidential_tracking_poll
Surely the death knell for McCain… Al Qaeda supporters are now backing him!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/22/al-qaeda-supporters-endor_n_136779.html
GWU/Battleground national tracking polls moves to Obama +2 (up 1)
Obama 49 (up 1)
McCain 47 (steady)
Hotline/Diageo national tracking poll moves to Obama +5 (down 1)
Obama 47 (steady)
McCain 42 (up 1)
F&M national poll (the first since mid-September) has Obama at +5 (up 7)
Obama 50 (up 5)
McCain 45 (down 2)
http://edisk.fandm.edu/FLI/keystone/pdf/keyNOc08_release.pdf
Muhlenberg College poll of PA has Obama +11
Obama 52
McCain 41
http://www.pollster.com/blogs/Release_10_21_08.pdf
Obama going up, up, up in RCP: now on 50.6 per cent.
I think I figured out why – the Dow Jones opened 2% down, and is now down nearly 4%.
Yup, back to +7.6
Think Michelle is measuring the curtains yet?
Not much I can tell you about the congressional races in Alaska (or indeed anywhere else), but a local poll has Democrats leading for both Senate and House.
On polls in the USA.
http://www.tnr.com/story_print.html?id=a3894827-4373-4f9b-a0e9-ebbc88036375
This poll matches the Intrade results.
Growing Doubts About McCain’s Judgment, Age and Campaign Conduct
Obama’s Lead Widens: 52%-38%
Pew Research Center
http://people-press.org/report/462/obamas-lead-widens
Yet for all that … Mason-Dixon has it line-ball in Virginia and Florida.
Grog @ 474, ok on that …… I don’t know whom he is backing, I try to avoid baseball as much as possible …..
I just thought McCain was a wimp for backing out the way he did with those words ….
Cheers
Good thing it was near the end of the day. You really need sleep if you are saying things like this. Think back to the current lot of problems. If NOT for WHOM the leader of the US IS at present, our troops would NOT have been amongst the FIRST to rush into Iraq. No way Beazely would have kowtowed to Bush. Grow up, mate.
ShowsOn,
Is there something afoot in the McCain camp that we don’t know about to reflect the seemingly sudden move? Maybe Intrade is reflecting the looming story that the NYT is getting ready to publish on the US weekend?
Ok, I’ve read in various articles this morning that Palin has a “voice coach” and “makeup artist”. We know from yesterday’s revelations that she has had more than 6 figures spent on her clothing. We know that she isn’t educated in the basics of civics (the VP does not control the Senate). She is massively underqualified.
What an idiot ………
(I knew that as soon as she was selected BUT given that the campaign has had to remake her {first 3 things noted above} now the general public is starting to figure it out as well).
juliem my point was that we should have independent foreign policy so it shouldn’t matter who is the President of a single country. It is the arrogance of Americans who think the world cares about who leads their country. To most people it makes no more difference than who leads any other country.
Ok now the rest of the story on the bear follows. While it seems to be now uncovered as an innocent enough prank, the anti Obama feelings which emanated from the comments following the original article and those my sister made were genuine and can not be excused.
Ok ltep, maybe I misunderstood your original post.
However, back in the real world, people DO care about who leads the US. Don’t fool yourself into thinking otherwise. There were millions of people in 2004, just as a for example, who were praying Kerry would get in. People were smart enough to know that GB {sorry if I’m raining on your guys parade here but he deserves all he has coming and then some} was the cause of the problems we were having and that if America got a new direction, so also would the world. Now, we are getting that and hearing the message but 4 years too late. Unfortunately, the world doesn’t get a mulligan on the Bush years. Thousands of parents, brothers, sisters, wives, sons and daughters who don’t have their men in their lives any more and it wasn’t necessary. Bill Clinton’s foibles didn’t kill anyone.
How charming. What delightful, civilised people.
I think the U.S. is Australia’s most important ally. Therefore I think it is beneficial to Australia for there to be a U.S. administration that doesn’t go around the world acting like a big jerk.
John McBush at his rhetorical best:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qX1ImnGQYcE
Sondeo et. al.,
As promised last night, poll closing times ….. Firstly though is a map with time zones for those who aren’t familiar with which states are where. For some states, they straddle two time zones, but as you will note in the poll closing time lists, that doesn’t always matter for purposes of calling an election in a particular state.
http://www.worldtimezone.com/time-usa12.php
http://www.thegreenpapers.com/G08/closing.phtml?format=c
Poll closing times are listed alphabetically for ease of finding a particular state. Cross reference to the time zone map for what time/state you want. Make sure you read all of the notes/exceptions at the bottom of the poll closing time list, that will give you a better picture. Note that in state, the most COMMON poll closing time (not necessarily the only one) is boldfaced in black.
Cheers
last line of 516 should read “Note that in each state, the most ……… “
McCain spent part of today in New Hampshire!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27319844/
This proves his campaign is a disorganised mess. N.H. is worth just 4 E.C. votes.
If he wins New Hampshire, and ALL of the toss up states on Pollster.com he still loses. His time would’ve been better spent elsewhere.
LOL!
SwingLowe et. al.,
I know you aren’t voting, SL, but after your nod yesterday to my suggestions for keeping warm on a cold November US day, you might particularly enjoy this one.
William Bowe: ” William Bowe
Posted Thursday, October 23, 2008 at 3:28 am | Permalink
Yet for all that … Mason-Dixon has it line-ball in Virginia and Florida
William, I thought you were a trend(y) bloke. M-D poll earlier this month in VA had McCain up by 3 points, now Obama +2. Of course, VA remains a genuine line-ball state, but this poll is a significant indicator of Obama’s improvement in VA from earlier this month.
Florida shows negligble change from earlier M-D poll, but my assumption has always been that Obama will never overcome the anti-Castro Cuban bloc (sorry, Juliem, can’t agree with you on this one!). Gore won FLA in 2000 because he had Lieberman for Veep, and Lieberman’s down there sweet-talking the retirement villages for McCain this time.
jj, no worries
……. we’ll see I guess in the end which way they fall, but Obama will win the election and probably Florida regardless ….. Does anyone have any stats on which is the bigger group numbers wise in Florida – Cuban/Hispanic vote OR Jewish vote? My guess is Jewish vote as that is state wide while the Cuban/Hispanic vote is concentrated in Dade and Broward counties …….
I’ll what other articles I can turn up on the Hispanic vote in South Florida in the next 2 weeks.
I suspect, though, that if Republican Hispanics can’t bring themselves to vote for Obama and don’t want to vote for McCain, that they will just stay home. Given that train of thought, it would be interesting to see some figures on the actual turnout (no matter who they vote for) of Hispanics compared to previous elections to see if the vote is depressed overall ……
Elegant analysis, Julie @ 523
Please note the M-D poll only has 51% women to 49% men, which I don’t believe will reflect the turnout numbers nationally, but particularly in Florida. For starters, the WWII generation of retires down have a heckuva lot more widows. Of course, I hope you are right, but it’s just that I’ve got some more VERY rightwing rels in Orlando blurring my judgement!
jj, I’ve (although not currently, in the past) a unique take on the Jewish vote in Florida. My ‘ex [from '79 to '95] was Jewish and his folks (both now deceased) lived in a suburb that straddled the Dade/Broward county line …..
CNN/Time Magazine Polls
VIRGINIA:
OBAMA 54
MCCAIN 44
OHIO:
OBAMA 50
MCCAIN 46
NEVADA:
OBAMA 51
MCCAIN 46
NORTH CAROLINA:
OBAMA 51
MCCAIN 47
And, a poll for the sole House of Reps seat in Idaho:
Democrats 51
Republicans 45
I’m not kidding, it IS Idaho!
Evan14,
Obama’s victory will be comprehensive enough that it will have coattail affects right down the ticket ….. Not as many people vote straight party tickets as used to in the US, but enough do that it will show, perhaps in places like this. I voted a straight party ticket but in my registered area in Michigan, it is safely a Democratic seat anyways, so the only question ever is not will the Republicans win, but how much will they lose by (what is the Dems winning margin in any given year).
Juliem,
Ah, then I certainly bow to your intimate knowledge, so to speak, with this demographic bloc in Fla! :>)
My rels there are my brother’s X plus my only nephew voting in his first election.
I’m disappointed William has not responded to my comment about the M-D trend in its VA poll results from earlier this month.
Last week he validly justified using certain “questionable” polls by making the sound argument that whatever the “house bias” of a poll, the trend remains informative and valid. I’ve been trying to raise my statz-IQ, but obviously I still don’t get it.
Heres a local angle…
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/queensland/logan-councillor-seeks-lesson-from-barack/2008/10/22/1224351335790.html
Good read!
McCain up by 8 in KY (Rasmussen):
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/election_20082/2008_presidential_election/kentucky/election_2008_kentucky_presidential_election
McCain will win KY, but the margin here seems to be lower than what I expected. Obama was supposed to struggle big time in Appalachia – instead, it seems that some of the Clinton Democrats in KY are coming back into the fold…
jj, don’t know when you made your comment but if today – William is in Perth and until the last Saturday of this month when they move to DST (we went early as you recall), they are 3 hours behind. He’s probably still in bed
jj, William is in Perth and probably still sleeping if you made your comment since 3am. Apologies if this or another version gets posted again later, the first attempt went into moderation, something the filter didn’t like about a word I used …..
Julie, Thanks for that helpful info. Cheers!
Regarding Kentucky, I find it sobering that McCain is likely to win any state at this stage. The republicans have left the USA bankrup morally and financially, unpopular throughout the world, and stuck in two wars. McCain is not evil, but his campaign has been lacklustre and he has proven incapable of fixing the economy, or choosing a VP who is competent to be interviewed. Who would vote for these people?
Fox were at it again late last night – still digging away at the ACORN non issue. Do the idiots really believe that is going to help McCain?
They were even criticising Kennedy for the way he handled the Cuban missile crisis. I kid you not.
ShowsOn… the US will always ‘go around the world acting like a big jerk’. The arrogance is innate.
Don’t know if this was already mentioned or not, but the New York Post was forced to retract the story about Michelle Obama and the lobster …
JJ et. al,
Obama’s Cuban policy {article dates back to May but it is pretty specific
A new tracking poll from Washington Post-ABC: 54/43 amongst likely voters. Could be a case not of “if” but of “how much”.
There’s still a reasonable chance that McCain will carry the majority of states. The problem for him is that they are mostly small states west of the Mississippi.
But the clear question as to who will vote for McCain – Republicans, conservatives (both social and economic), veterans, McCain fans (of which many are independents), free traders, rich people detrimentally affected by Obama tax plans and racists. Remember, even the worst candidates get quite a few votes – Goldwater got 39% of the popular vote in ‘64, McGovern got 39% in ‘72 and Mondale got 41% in ‘84. This doesn’t apply only to the US – the Libs got 47% of TPP last year here and Labor got 44% of the TPP in 1966…
540
Swing Lowe. It looks like the perfect wedge. McCain has no choice but to appeal to the groups you list. But when he does he automatically alienates everyone else. How sweet it is.
Quite so, Julie @ 533. Julian: I was just sayin’. Besides which, Mason-Dixon is pretty much in the ballpark of other recent Florida polls, as my aggregate indicates.
It looks like the Republicans are all but giving up on Colorado, abandoning a Republican congresswoman in one marginal house seat.
Interesting rumour from Daily Kos: things are tightening up in Arizona, a new poll to come out in the next few days will show McCain’s lead in the polls shrinking.
I wonder what all these liberal blogs are going to turn into once the Democrats get the Presidency and control of Congress. Will they attack from the left? Or will the turn into slavish supporters of the establishment.
David Walsh @ 310
“Correct. Missouri is more Macarthur than Eden-Monaro. But if Obama wins handily, he’ll snag Missouri. Just as Labor nearly won Macarthur last year.”
Perfectly right, on the Missouri-Macarthur analogy. If there’s an electoral college equivalent of Eden-Monaro, it’d be Iowa, or maybe Nevada. Iowa seems to have fallen hard for Obama, whereas Nevada is still flirting.
I lived in Iowa for a few years, and the Dem-GOP divide is largely geographical. The western half of Iowa is like Nebraska and the Dakotas, whereas eastern Iowa falls under the sway of the Dem strongolds of Chicago IL and Madison WI. This may help explain why Iowa has swung behind Obama more than I expected.
“Correct. Missouri is more Macarthur than Eden-Monaro. But if Obama wins handily, he’ll snag Missouri. Just as Labor nearly won Macarthur last year.”]
Have to disagree there. Missouri has been a bellweather since 1904 with the exception of 1956, when it inexplicably voted for Adlai Stevenson over Eisenhower. It is very much the Eden-Monaro of the US.
The equivalent of Macarthur could be Tennessee. Tennessee has been perfect as a bellweather since 1928 with the sole exception of 1960 (where it voted for Nixon). However, it is highly unlikely Obama will carry TN unless it is a mega-landslide – much like how Rudd was never going to carry Macarthur unless it was a mega-landslide last year…
New Zogby poll reveals all
http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/zogby_poll_john_zogby
Adam,
I think you should also trawl through Barack’s profile there
http://www.theonion.com/content/whitehousewar/barackobama
I just love his stance on the ‘issues’
William Bowe,
Thanks, but it was actually the Virginia result I was discussing in terms of taking the trend into account. Doubtless you’re too busy out west to answer every ignoramus query I write in here.
Swing Lowe @ 548
Missouri may have once been a bellweather state, but not any more. Not for a long time, in fact. Although the boundaries of US states don’t change, the demographics do. The status of a given state as a bellweather is prone to change, as the demographics change. Missouri is fairly safe GOP, as is Tennessee (which is even more so).
The “South” use to be safe-as-houses Democratic territory, but since WW2 (especially with the civil rights movement) the GOP has been very successful at flipping these states into the GOP column. Some individual Southern states are inching back to the Dems (N. Carolina, Virginia), but not Tennessee.
Too many racists in Tennesee, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi – why Obama won’t win those states! The logic of poor white people continually voting for a party that does nothing for them economically or socially often escapes me, but sadly I have to conclude it comes down to race!
546,
Oz, I vote for slavish supporters of the establishment
….. some of the papers out there can’t get any more left than they already are 
Re 547,
Does anyone want to entertain a change of their prediction on whether or not Obama will take Missouri? At present, we’ve 11 or 12 people into our little contest and there are only two of us, myself included don’t remember the other person, but he knows who he is, who’ve said yes to that. The other 9 or 10 of you have said no …. and mind you, if any of you out there are entertaining the thought of changing and saying yes Obama will take MO, then you might want to revise your EV total too as both of the current guesses for yes on MO are both 330+ in number
Re 554,
The New York Times being a prime example. I can’t WAIT to see their expose on the McCain camp and the dirty linen behind the Sarah Palin pick (coming out this weekend US time, don’t know if Saturday or Sunday).
evan14 @ 553
Racism is (sadly) part of the reason. But there’s also cultural values – which boils down to “God & guns”.
It’s tragic that the average poor white factory worker in Tennesee or Alabama would rather vote for the party that supports prayer in schools over the party that is more likelty to deliver him health care and three square meals a day.
There will always be those kinds of people, just as there are in Australia. It’s a bit harsh to judge them all the same way. The majority voting for GWB twice, now that is inexcusable.
Here is one poll that it is totally safe to ignore …..
Yes, Dario, there is no helping some people. My sis falls into that group and if 5 relatives can’t turn her mind (2 parents had 4 children in my generation of which I am the oldest), a pure stranger won’t be able to …..
Open mouth. Insert foot up to the HIP ……
I should say, the majority of ‘voters’
Dario,
When did the majority of voters pick GWB twice? Are you talking about when he was Texas Governor or what?
Does anyone know if we are going to get the opportunity to see Oliver Stone’s “W” which opened in USA last week?
Latest Zogby poll is 52-40 to Obama; a dramatic improvement in that poll from 4 days ago.
http://www.zogby.com
True
I will amend my comment a second time… a majority of ‘Electoral Colleges’, not allowing for the court’s influence of course
The majority of voters only picked GWB once, in ‘04. In 2000, he lost the popular vote, although he ‘won’ the majority of electoral college votes (and even that was dubious).
I must say Zogby has gone a bit nuts over the past week… from +5.5% Obama to +12%, while GWU/Battleground has done the reverse! Crazy. Thank goodness there are a good number of polls to give us a decent average. Can you imagine trying to interpret these kinds of mad swings from just two or three pollsters in Australia in the lead up to an election?
Dario, just remember that we Aussies voted for Howard no less than 4!! times. Personally, I think that both Bush election wins were understandable. Al Gore didn’t make the most of his great advantages in 2000, and in ‘04 the Iraq war hadn’t yet become a complete morass, and Kerry didn’t campaign that well.
Not sure if this had been mentioned, but it looks as though the AP poll from yesterday that had Obama only +1 was a shocker in terms of sample… either that or the US has suddenly had an influx of born again Christians lol
http://www.americablog.com/2008/10/new-flawed-ap-poll-claims-mccain-and.html
To our eternal shame
Julie, Re: the AP Poll.
The Republican owner of AP, who served McCain his favourite “Staight-talk Express donut and coffee” at an AP Q and A forum in the middle of the year, would never stoop so low as to employ a screen which would specifically work to the benefit of McCain. All major American polling companies are 100% honest, objective, disinterested and professional.
Moreover, the possibility that McCain’s corporate tax cut plan would benefit large media companies like AP to the tune of hundreds of millions of $ each, would never have the slightest impact on any of them because their professional integrity far outweighs any short-term gain of chump-change such as this.
Zogby’s comments today are even more significant than the numbers. He’s almost doing a Colin Powell.
Re 570, Dario, I beat you to it @ 559
Hahahaha how blind am I! Totally missed that one, my apologies
No apology needed …. you are probably like me and just post as you go before necessarily reading all of posts since your last visit to PB
….. I am especially guilty of that when I wake up in the morning as posts usually run till about 3am Canberra time so I’ve sometimes got lots to read when I wake up ….
More on the Hispanic vote, it isn’t just Cuban-Americans.
If people in other states are as energized as they are in Michigan, can you spell L A N D S L I D E?
…..
I grew up in this state and to have 98% of voting age people registered in a state/country where voting is not mandatory is amazing to me. Whether or not they vote (I sure hope that they do) is beside the point, but to just have them registered …. this gives a little window into what sort of turnout we can expect in the Election
…
Mind you, the Detroit News is the right wing rag in the state of Michigan and they’ve endorsed McCain this year too …..
Rogue phone callers in Spanish trying to discourage NV hispanics from going to the polls …
Someone who like some of us on PB can’t wait until 5th November
[ changes in emphasis added by me ]
98% is most certainly impressive. It’s great to see people engaged in the political system of their country.
That’s more than here. Wasn’t the vote in last years election about 90% of eligible voters? Add to that people who deliberately voted informal, I’d say only about 85% of people here actually voted last year.
The ‘turnout’ was just under 95%, with informal votes making up just under 4% of all votes. What part of that 4% was deliberate is anyone’s guess!
I’m not sure exactly how to find the % of the eligible population that enrolled was but I’m sure someone may be able to cast some light!
I think it is high 80s%
The turn out in this year’s N.T. election was very low. Low 80% from memory.
I guess I should disclose that I think voting should be completely voluntary, and the 98% figure shows that political campaigns CAN create extremely high turn out if they motivate their voters to attend.
ltep and showson, just to clarify, that 98% is registered voters based upon voting age population …… i always keep track of the michigan news so will try to get voter turnout numbers after the fact …..
I’m not decided on it. I can see the sense in both sides of the argument but would need to do a fair bit of reading to be persuaded one way or the other.
Of course, the prospects of voluntary voting are pretty low. Neither party supports it (only elements of both parties). Having said that, when a main proponent of voluntary voting is Nick Minchin…
juliem
can you repost table of predictions
btw was I a no or yes re MO
and my 11 yr old son wondered if you had sold all the yugi ohs (he luvs destiny heroes)
Firstly, not many people realise it, but we already have voluntary voting, we just have compulsory attendance (in the sense that all eligible voters are meant to be enrolled, and if you are enrolled you are required to attend).
Sure the act says that the voter must fill in their ballot in a formal fashion, but this law is un-policeable, because we have secret ballots. So electoral commission officials have absolutely no way of checking your ballot without themselves breaking the law.
But beyond that, I just think that compulsory attendance gives the political parties here a free ride. They don’t have to motivate people to get out and vote, they just have to shift who they decide to support. Most people end up voting the same way at most elections, and most people vote the same way as their parents (this has shown to strongly correlate)
So it is as if half the job is already done for the parties.
Another reason I support voluntary attendance is that I think political decisions should be decided by those that actually care, and actually take an interest to go and vote. As our system stands elections are won and lost by people who simply don’t pay that much attention. Why not just let those people stay home if they don’t care? Let the election be won and lost by those that were motivated enough to take a stand on the issues, and who spent time motivating others to do the same.
I also think we should have optional preferential. The fact people are forced to put a preference next to parties that they simply can’t stand just to make a valid vote is stupid.
Yeah that figure is extraordinarily high. I suggest that is higher than eligible registered voters Australian wide, even though we supposedly have compulsory voting (which as I explain above is actually a misnomer).
I’m strongly against optional preferential which has the same flaws as first past the post.
I doubt that EVERYONE would use it even if it became legal.
In fact, if it became legal a lot of people wouldn’t know it was legal so they would continue filling in their ballots the same. I think it would just make more informal votes count as formal.
juliem @ 555,
Here’s my prediction
Obama 364 = Kerry + IA, NM, CO, NV, FL, VA, NC, OH, MO
Gusface, my ebay user id is mccamish1. There are still a handful of auctions open and bidable on. However, all of what is currently up there is all we have left. So when those auctions are exhousted, there won’t be any more. Also check ansonholt. My husband has listed half of ours and I’ve got the other half.
Now to keep this on topic …
ShowsOn @ 588,
I worked as a polling official on the ACT elections. One of the ladies I issued a ballot to tore it up in front of my face and put the pieces into the ballot box by the exit. Even her husband rolled his eyes to the ceiling …..
I support optional preferential, with the right to to stop numbering when you get to the jerks that should not be in parliament under any circumstances.
David @ 592, will add that one in, no worries, I’ll post another update probably about 4 to 7 days out from the election unless someone else (like Gus did tonight) wants an update sooner …..
Clearly the lady supported optional preferential with no squares numbered being an option.
Swing Lowe @ 548,
I think you’re really straining the analogy.
Yes Missouri is the bellwether par excellence. But then so was Macarthur, having gone with the winner at every election from 1949 to 2004. So I don’t know why you protest that Eden-Monaro is the superior comparison (as if it mattered much), when it’s only been a bellwether since 1972.
If Rudd had have won last year’s election in a 1983 or 1996 esque landslide then Macarthur would have fallen. The Missouri comparison is apt; it’s not a state that will fall with a moderately sized Democratic victory. If Florida had fairer electoral procedures in 2000, we would no longer be talking about Missouri as a bellwether.
David @ 592, can you tell me what state you think will put Obama over the top on election returns? I will be watching CNN and will take my answer to this question based upon what they use. This question and the question “will Obama win Missouri” will be our tiebreakers and I can see that you’ve put MO into your list already
. Cheers 
I wonder if TECHNICALLY, the lady should be forced to take another ballot because she has OBVIOUSLY deliberately cast an informal vote.
Exactly, same here. You should be able to do just 1, or as many numbers as you like. Of course if it there is also voluntary attendance then people probably wouldn’t go to a polling place just to tear up their ballot.
LOL!
Re 595,
OH good …. if that were in place, I wouldn’t tick Liberals at all, well as it stands now I put them dead last so its the next best thing
…..
juliem,
Without really thinking about it, I’m tempted to say California; given its size (in electoral votes) and timezone. It will come in later than a lot of other states, but will probably still be called before a few of the swing states that close earlier.
Yeah, let’s go with California.
(Of course, in what order the states are called might depend on what network you’re watching.)
David,
Exactly … it will depend upon what network you are watching but I’ve been upfront about what I’m watching and I’ve been clear about that. It is only a tie breaker question and we shouldn’t need it. At present, we’ve only got two of us on the same EV guess and they’ve picked different “over the top” states. One or the other of those two will be closer to the mark.
I’ll write down California ….
jj, did you pick a state for the one that will put Obama over the top? If you have, I’ve forgotten and haven’t recorded it, thanks
New Qunnipiac polls
Florida: Obama 49%, McCain 44%
Ohio: Obama 52%, McCain 38%
Pennsylvania: Obama 53%, McCain 40%
It has to be said that Quinnipiac has had a slight Democratic lean compared to other polls this cycle. The Pennsylvania result accords with most other polls at the moment. But it’s interesting that they have Ohio just as wide; looks like an outlier.
For those that are interested here are the closing times for polls on election day Nov 4 in the US.
http://www.thegreenpapers.com/G08/closing.phtml?format=ac
Holy crap!
Julie, Thanks for asking.
Just because it would bug the **** outta’ my brother, I’m calling Colorado for The Little Bewdy that puts Obama over the top. Cheers!
David W.
For context, can you tell us what the movement is from Q’s previous polling of these states. I’m a trend(y) bloke now! :>)
Here’s the Quinnipiac head making a similar comment to what Zogby said this morning:
Said pollster Peter Brown: “As we enter the home stretch, Sen. Obama is winning voter groups that no Democrat has carried in more than four decades, and he holds very solid leads in the big swing states. If these numbers hold up, he could win the biggest Democratic landslide since Lyndon Johnson in 1964.”
Please note that views of Peter Brown @ 609 do not necessarily reflect those of the pessimistic guy who posted them.
Only negligible trends from previous Quinn’s poll for the states in post 605:
Fla: O-2, M+1
OH: O+2, M-4
PA: O-1, M+1
The previous was 50 / 42 in Ohio, 51 / 43 in Florida, 54 / 39 in Pennsylvania.
I think this is hyperbole. LBJ won 44 states, and 61% of the vote.
Remember, if Obama wins 5% more of the vote than McCain, he will win by about 150 electoral votes, which compared to the last two elections is a massive landslide.
Here’s some more interesting hyperbole from Quinn’s Peter Brown:
“Perhaps the most remarkable development is that Obama is doing significantly better among white, born again evangelicals in Ohio and Pennsylvania than did Democratic nominee John Kerry four years ago. He also is winning Roman Catholics in those states, historically the key swing voter group in the electorate and synonymous here with the blue-collar vote.
“In Florida, Obama’s margin over McCain is due mostly from stronger support from Hispanics than Kerry received.”
Juliem, will be most pleased to read the last sentence!
Re: Quinn’s Peter Brown comment about Obama doing better with Catholics in PA and OH. Joe Biden is a Catholic raised in Scranton PA. Good thing he’s helping the demographic pull in such an important battlegrounder. Now, I love Joe Biden, but I got to say that he’s become the Peter Garrett of this election.
Sorry, last sentence should be Peter Garrett of the Obama campaign.
And Sarah Palin is the Jackie Kelly of the McCain campaign. I am hoping she will employ Jackie’s unparalled communication skills displayed on the talk show the morning after the phony racist leaflets were reported.
Very good article by the NYT on the McCain campaign…..
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/26/magazine/26mccain-t.html?_r=1&em&oref=slogin….
Juliem
please change mo to yes
(cheers re ebay,jack will have a look tomorrow)
Some Republicans are really scraping the bottom of the barrel now. Like this guy, who says ALL the polls are biased because the pollsters have head offices in Democratic states:
http://wizbangblog.com/content/2008/10/21/gallup-and-new-coke.php
In a previous post he strongly implied that he considers Obama “evil man”
http://wizbangblog.com/content/2008/10/19/god-and-the-election.php
It’s as if Ron, Glen and E.S.J. and G.P. set up their own blog.
Showson, you’re braver than me, I won’t get myself dirty by trawling through the Republican blog sites.
Another poll shows Obama leading by more than 10 points in Pennsylvania!
And McCain thinks he can win the state?
They’re hilarious! I do it for a laugh when I’m not reading http://www.whitehouse.org
shows
I thought he was talking about bush until the bit about Obama
ps isnt “So I cannot say that God would not allow an Obama presidency…”
a double negative?
Yes, his plan is to have his name changed to Obama Barack, in hope it will win him extra votes via confusion.
Yeah, hence the word since.
It’s not hyperbole, not even close. There have only been three Dem wins in that time and the biggest was Clinton’s 379 to Dole’s 159 in 1996.
New polls have Obama 12 points ahead in Ohio, AND 10 points ahead in Indiana, believe it or not:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/10/23/75921/295/145/639542
Thanks for the heads up, evan14.
Looking at the Big 10 results and comparing them to the September results, it’s a huge across-the-board improvement for Obama.
Yet I still find it difficult to take Indiana seriously as a swing state.
Those numbers are just mind-blowing…
Morning Call poll of PA with a familiar set of numbers…
Obama 52 (up 4 from a month ago)
McCain 42 (up 1)
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/pa/pennsylvania_mccain_vs_obama-244.html
Rasmussen national tracking poll up another point for Obama to +7
Obama 52
McCain 45
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/election_20082/2008_presidential_election/daily_presidential_tracking_poll
Outlier or no outlier, Quinnipac has sent Ohio rocketing up my polling aggregates list.
GWU/Battleground national tracking poll up 2 points for Obama to +4
Obama 49 (steady)
McCain 45 (down 2)
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/RCP_PDF/BG_102308_2-way-ballot-trender.pdf
That’s Zogby, Rasmussen & GWU all moving to Obama so far this morning, combined with some devestating state polling numbers for McCain. The national RCP average is back up to +7.4, just half a point off its highest level for the Dems since the primaries. Ouch.
wow this is looking nasty
jj @ 613,
Yes, that is good about the Hispanics in Florida
…… In another poll shocker, this is from Indiana. Must say it surprised me …..
If you link to the article and read the analysis,they list a link for their companion September poll of a month ago so you can see the changes in 30 days.
Also a note about the name “Big 10″ as it clearly states at one point, “11 universities in the conference” [although they didn't all participate in the survey]. The group of universities used to be 10 in number until the mid ’90s. Penn State University joined the group at that point, they had been independent before. In the US, being with a “group” of other schools and organizing together has numerous benefits, the most evident to the students/fans/alumni of the school is that you can more easily schedule fellow schools as opponents for sporting events.
jj. don’t know if Joe can sing, but that is an interesting comparison. He is certainly pulling in voters though in those key areas, isn’t he?
….. I’ve always liked him and when he was running for president on his own initiative many years ago, I would have voted for him then, but he dropped out of the primaries before they reached Michigan that year.
thanks sondeo @ 616 … that was part of what I’ve been waiting for, don’t know if more will be posted or not on the weekend ….
Dario,
Blow your mind to look at these numbers as well ….. Georgia is on the way to the party
…
She: Really? Unbelievable! What an amazing country!
We’re beginning to get a sense of how Barack Obama’s political success could change global perceptions of the United States, redefining the American “brand” to be less about Guantánamo and more about equality.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/23/opinion/23kristof.html?_r=2&ref=opinion&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
]
35,000 at Obama’s rally in Indiana earlier today, then he went off to Hawaii to visit his gran!
Obama passes 87 on Intrade for the first time.
McCain conceding already?
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/10/23/153446/90/696/640024
Read it and weep:
Ass. Press McCain campaign reporter, Ruth Fouhy, today shows no respect for their own recent poll:
“With just 12 days left in the presidential contest, most polls show the Arizona senator trailing Democrat Barack Obama nationally and in most battleground states, although a new AP-GfK poll showed the race tightening a bit in the last few days.”
Tightening a BIT. WTF? If poll was taken seriously, the race would be trendy to a dead heat.
Hi Julie -
Here are my predictions for your competition:
Obama 338 (Kerry states + VA, OH, FL, CO, NV, IA, NM), McCain 200. My thinking is that this will be a comfortable victory, but there will be a slight narrowing come election day.
Virginia will be the state that “puts Obama over the top”, in that once VA is called for Barry, all the networks will call the election over.
McCain will squeak home in MO.
House: Dems 245, GOP 190; Senate: Dems 57, GOP 43 (for what it’s worth).
Hotline national tracking poll unchanged
Obama 48 (down 1)
McCain 43 (down 1)
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/docs/Hotline_102308.htm
CBS/NYT weekly national poll down 1 for Obama at +13
Obama 52 (down 1)
McCain 39 (steady)
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/10/23/opinion/polls/main4541781.shtml?tag=topStory;topStoryHeadline
ABC/Wash Post national tracking poll unchanged at Obama +11
Obama 54 (steady)
McCain 43 (steady)
http://abcnews.go.com/images/PollingUnit/1077a7Tracking4.pdf
IBD/TIPP national tracking poll in 3 points to have Obama +1
Obama 45 (down 1)
McCain 44 (up 2)
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/Polls.aspx?id=309635713550536
My guess this will be the poll the media focus on of course…
Gallup “hedging their bets” LV average in to +5 from +6.5 Obama
http://www.gallup.com/poll/111415/Gallup-Daily-Obama-Has-Modest-Lead-Among-Likely-Voters.aspx
RCP average at +7.5 Obama
Indiana just surged 16 points in 24 hours on Intrade to move into the Dems column
That’s nuts! I guess that is a lot of people who think the first poll showing Obama leading (even though it was statistically insignificant) is the start of a trend.
IBD/TPP has a serious flaw
see http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/
It has 74% of 18-24 yr olds voting for… MCCAIN.
bahahahahah
lol that’s funny stuff
My EV prediction…
Obama 318 (Kerry states + VA, FL, IA CO, NV, NM).
So the same tally as Hugo, except I’m giving OH to McCain. Like Hugo, I think NC and MO will go to McCain.
I’m starting to get that feeling too
On election night, if Indiana is looking line-ball in early counting, then Ohio will go to Obama. I remember watching the ‘04 election in the US, and I remember the Bushies knew they had won Ohio when they saw the numbers coming in from the adjoining part of Indiana.
Latest Fox News online poll: “Which presidential candidate do you think would face an international crisis in his first year in office if elected?”
What? Are you asking us which one would put us more at risk of an international crisis? Or which one would handle it best? Or whether there will be a crisis?
Ridiculously worded question.
A local university poll has Obama leading 44-40 in Montana, so I’m including it in my aggregates now.
Those poll results on environmental issues lead me to wonder exactly why they’d prefer Obama. They’re enough to make anyone concerned about the environment cringe!
My 293 is looking a bit conservative. What happened to the Narrowing?
Can we have a definition of a landslide? There’s going to be a lot of arguments about whether Obi’s win is a landslide, thrashing, humiliation etc so it would be nice to have a definition BEFORE the election. I propose that an EV win by >100 and a popular vote win >5% constitutes an Obamaslide but that’s just a suggestion.
Cowboy Country goes for Obama eh
YEEEEEEEEEEEEHAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
or is that just the Brokeback Mountain vote ?
Yeah.. I know…lame
Scott McClelland endorses Obama.
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/10/23/former-bush-aide-voting-for-obama/
Dio – 375 EV’s seems to be the most used definition of a landslide.
Possum
How so? Shouldn’t we look back at past elections, work out which were considered to be landslides and use that as a gold standard.
BTW I still haven’t forgiven you for what you did to Ronster, you evil marsupial!
WTF????
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=652859
For starters, the ‘B’ is back to front…
Here is their explanation of exactly how wrong that poll is:
What did he do? Perhaps dare to use evidence when making an argument? I can see how that would’ve upset Ron.
Her attackers must’ve used a mirror to apply the ‘B’.
Dio went:
Dunno – 375 just seems to be the figure plucked from punditariats orifices most regularly. 538 uses it, you see it bandied about in some of the electoral literature. But so saying, 350 is another popular number!
Oh dear, the Republicans are now criticising Obama for visiting his sick Grandma!
WTF?
I’m sure the republicans are disgusted at even the suggestion that the democrats might appeal more than they do to their dependable older aged voting bloc. Obama should be associating with communists, hippies, radical tree huggers and other easily dismissed groups with small numbers of voters.
ShowsOn
I might be the only one but I miss Ron.
Matty Drudge is getting really desperate now. The concensus is that only a terrorist attack can save McCain now. So, of course, someone asked Chertoff what the chance of that was. He says there is no evidence of anything being planned by al Qaeda before the election. I suppose that leaves the Repugs with three other options (1) Replace Palin with Romney, (2) suspend Posse Comitatus and send in the armed forces, (3) stage a terrorist attck.
Personally, I think (3) is the most likely.
Replacing Palin with Romney would send them backwards.
Oh same here, he was hilarious.
Well I am waiting for a real lunatic moment. Some prominent McCain backer saying something completely bizarre in an attempt to help McCain, but all it does is send more people to Obama which cements a landslide.
You know, a U.S. version of the Lindsay affair. Or the forged Kennet papers. Something really stupid.
Joe the Plumber wants a book deal – GMAB:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/10/23/214129/68/329/640391
On Intrade, Obama has bigger leads in Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio, than McCain has in North Dakota. I wonder if that will be the next state to fall.
I suppose Bush could delay the elections and impose martial law
But I get the impression Shrub doesn’t like McCain, he will probably let him sink!
Still can’t pay his taxes hey?
ShowsOn, North Dakota or Montana look to be fighting it out for the most likely State to cross the 50% Dem win threshold. Montana has threatened to a few times over the last 3 months but always pulled back at the last minute. ND has become a bit of a bolter.
Do you think Obama will win the Omaha, Nebraska ‘electorate’? I think he will get it if he wins a 375+ landslide. The trouble is there are hardly any polls done for that state, so it is hard to tell:
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/10/whats-different-about-this-map.html
Possum
I looked up landslide US victories on Wiki and both of Bill Clinton’s victories count. The best definition seems to be 370 EV using historical criteria. Thats about where we are at the moment.
ShowsOn went:
I reckon Obama would have to be pretty close to a favorite in the second congressional district there at the moment now that registered Dems outnumber registered Republicans for the first time ever.
Dio went:
Sold for 370!
Interesting article from pollster.com showing that the national polls showing Obama’s better leads tend to be those that poll voters with only mobile-phones (i.e. the youth vote)
http://www.pollster.com/blogs/tracking_polls_vs_traditional.php
I think 359 or more counts, because that means one candidate got 2/3 of the electoral votes. That sounds pretty convincing to me.
We shouldn’t forget that the last two elections were unusually close, so even if Obama gets say 300 people will count that as a relative landslide.
evan14,
Joe the plumber is clearly not aiming high enough. He should be going for a syndicated TV series like a talk show or a home renovation program (even though he’s not a registered plumber).
Fraudulence into Fame! Only in …
But don’t they weight for age anyway? So if they keep getting young respondents, don’t they simply stop asking for their responses?
I guess people could lie about their age. But why would someone lie in order to opt IN to a survey? I think people are more likely to lie to opt out!
Obama has been putting plenty of advertising resources into that district as well
They don’t just poll mobile-phone only voters and nobody else… they include them into their calls along with landline voters. Other pollsters don’t call them at all, which is the point they are making.
538 now has McCain down to a 3.7% chance of winning lol
ShowOn – it’s the sociodemographic qualities of cell phone only households, even within age ranges, that is a substantial cause of the discrepency.
Basically, young voters with only cell phones are on average, less conservative than their land line household brethren. Large amounts of college students being cell phone only households are a major cause of that, but cell phone only households also tend to be urban based (another string Democrat demographic this cycle) which happens to overlap with college students. So there’s lot’s of things all working together that are hard to individually pull apart that seems to be the cause of the cell-phone effect to the point where even age weighting landline respondents doesnt account for it appropriately.
The ‘mobile only’ stuff was silly when it was about our election and it’s silly about the US election too.
McCain has actually cut his ad buys in Pennsylvania… perhaps they are not focussing on it after all, although the article does mention that this may simply be due to the fact that their is less available time in some markets because Obama has bought so much of the market
http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/10/big_picture_mccain_shifting_hi.php
It sounds like McCain is into “protecting the furniture”.
Dario: That 538 site is crazy, the Republican trolls over there are getting hammered!
In other words: McCain has given up trying to win Pennsylvania, he’s basically conceded Obama will win Iowa/New Mexico/Colorado – it’s a concession of defeat!
McCain will try and hold on to Virginia/North Carolina/Ohio/Florida, to make an Obama win at least narrow(in electoral vote terms)
Hugo, got it, no worries
… will add it in …..
Evan14 @ 642,
What a moron ….. even JH could do better than that, eh?
…. he appeared on stage ….
Dio @ 660, post any changes you want to make and I’ll make them. Just to check myself, I will post another list about 4 to 7 days out …..
Ltep,
I appreciate that you’re PollBludgers professional contrarian, but the cell-phone effect in the US is no different from the housewife effect in Australia (try ringing housholds at 2.00pm on a Wednesday arvo and see what you get). The problem of not getting truly random samples of blokes between 25-55 years on weekday afternoons is an issue of timing whereas not getting a truly random sample of young people by using landlines is exactly the same problem but caused by technology instead. We could argue that both are simply caused by lifestyle.
You’ve mentioned the cell phone effect coming out at the last election before – can you remember where it was mentioned and who mentioned it?
In the US we already have statistically significant evidence that it exists:
http://www.pollster.com/blogs/tracking_polls_vs_traditional.php
Not only by looking at the difference between national tracking polls that include cell phones in the sampling frame and those whom don’t such as Pollster.com has done, but even with individual pollsters themselves:
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/964/cell-phones-and-the-2008-vote-an-update
What is interesting about the cell phone effect isnt that it exists at all – we’d expect it to manifest eventually as cell phone only households increase in relative proportions to landline households – but why it hasnt shown up at all in Australia yet and why it took so long to show up in the US.
Sarah Palin’s “Shopping Spree” LMFAO:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/10/23/221144/03/296/640424
Possum,
I based my guess upon Obama winning all of the states upon the RCP no tossup states map + Indiana ….. think that is either 374 or 375, I’m not on the computer right now that has that list on it ….
Possum,
Are you coming into our little guessing contest? I can’t remember, again not at the other computer in our house at the moment, but I don’t think you are in yet …..
Dario,
They are giving him way too much credit
…..
Possum, I just want to mention that you’re hypercorrecting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercorrection
sorry Dario, 703 should note that the number that they are giving McCain of between 3 and 4% chance …..
I try to avoid reading the comments
I agree, i reckon 1% at best
It’s not a good sign when McCain’s staffers are already sending out their resumes to prospective new employers.
jj, my sis sent me today unsolicited an article by the Detroit News – it was their endorsement for McCain. I responded by forwarding her, without additional comment, a cut and paste of an article that had heaps of veterans endorsing Obama as CIC
. My BIL is a sherrif’s deputy in real life after retiring on 20 years in the Army as a warrant officer …..
Juliem went:
I’m not too sure that Montana, North Dakota, Indiana and West Virginia (let alone 2 of the 3 Nebraska Congressional Districts) have decided which way they are going to flip yet. So it’s 364 pretty much certain + X.
And I have no idea at the moment how big X is, or is even likely to be.
It’s a terrible habit J-D. I always fall into it when I’m trying to be precise.
Normally people just tell me to stop being a condescending prick and STFU!
Everyone makes mistakes.
Maybe the only reason I mentioned it is that I’m the condescending prick?
Possum @ 710, you have until 10pm on Tuesday Nov. 4th to get me your predictions should you decide you want all the way in. Need EV number & guess on if Obama wins MO & state that will put Obama over the top. I say 10pm as that is the approx. time I will go to bed (I’m on Canberra time) and the polls will be already in progress by the time I wake up Wednesday morning so that would be cheating to take any more guesses at that point.
10pm deadline on Tuesday the 4th …. Cheers
Don’t think we will have to wait up on the state of Washington for a result but IF we do we will be waiting awhile …
Zogby tracking poll in two points to +10
Obama 51 (down 1)
McCain 41 (up 1)
http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1607
Re 511,
ltep, this post is for you
your 511 follows:
Now take a look at this. Just as a for example: (1) Canada – 75% of Canadians say it makes a difference to their country who is elected President of the USA & (2) Australia – their poll says 75% of Australians say it makes a difference to us who is POTUS & (3) Norway – 73% of Norwegians say it makes a difference to them who is elected POTUS.
They must be lying julie
Further to 718,
From the depths of that story comes this gem, a la Watergate in 1972
…..
NYT says Obama’s margin of victory if the election were held today would exceed Clinton’s in 1992 ….
Interesting Gallup Poll stats and analysis (’Bottom Line”) that the proportion of total RV’s who are first-time voters in 2008 is the same as it was in 2004 @ 13%:
“First-time voters show solid support for Obama, 65% to 31%. That is a better showing for the Democratic candidate than in 2004, when first-time voters favored John Kerry over George W. Bush by 55% to 41%.
Bottom Line
Each presidential election brings a new wave of voters into the electoral process. And although there is speculation that Obama’s candidacy — given his appeal to young and minority voters — could bring an unusually large number of first-time voters to the polls this year, the proportion of registered voters who say they will be voting for the first time is no higher than it was in 2004. This to some degree may reflect the high turnout in 2004, which was about 10 points higher than it had been in recent elections, and thus would have significantly diminished the available pool of potential first-time voters for the 2008 election. Thus, the fact that the 2008 estimate of first-time voters is no lower than the 2004 estimate may still reflect an impressive influx of new voters this year, even though it may not be proportionately higher than in the last election.
If you’re still around juliem, i’d love in on your competition.
So i’d like 400 for Obama (that’s Kerry plus Iowa, Florida, NC, Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Georgia, Missouri, Colorado, New Mexico, Montana, North Dakota and one Nebraskan vote (that can happen can’t it?)). Obviously Obama wins Missouri. And tipping him over 270? Hmmm…how about Florida? Yes i believe i’ll go with that.
Wooo!
Yo ho ho,
anyone can get in, I’ve put your guesses down. no awards here other than the pride of the one who got it right
……. you’re further out than I am, brave you are 
… good on you 
Ahh Juliem.
Definately bravado – false and based on nothing other than hunches!
Yo ho ho,
I’ve said the current state of the RCP no tossup states map + Indiana which is 375 …….
ROTFL …….
Are we the highest Juliem? i remember last year with the Fed, people were tipping high 80s and 90s (and some in the 100s). I went low (78) and was a little dissapointed i wasn’t more wrong!
Yo ho ho,
This is the range so far. Mine is 375, yours is 400 …
286
291
293
306
309
310
311
313
318
338
338
348
348
350
364
375
400
Right, so i’m clearly the crazy one! Good times.
As the title says, you know it is bad when …
William, Possum, HOLD the presses ….
Montana is the next most likely to flip on Intrade, probably thanks to this poll.
Indiana keeps going back and forth between the candidates.
McCain is toast!
That is all
Research 2000/Daily KOS: O-52 (up one) M-40 (down one)
Can I just make a quick prediction? That lady who was mutilated by the nasty black man is going to be a fraud. The B is too neat and even in depth to be done involuntarily. I’m guessing she turns out to be a very sick puppy. I have been wrong before but I’m pretty confident on this one.
Dio, agreed on that
….. back to the IR footy game, see you all in the morning, briefly. Going to Perisher for a bushwalk tomorrow and not home again till late in the day …. 
I assumed that the reason it was back to front is because she did it to herself while looking into a mirror.
A bit of poetic justice here. The McCarthyesque Bachman has been abandoned by the RNC who are pulling her advertising. With her opponent getting $1M based on her disgusting comments it’s bye bye time for Bachman.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/22/gop-pulling-its-ads-from_n_136941.html
Diogenes,
Gee you are boring when you go in to self righteous mode.
Fox is on about the narrowing at the moment, supported by a shot of Palin saying it is going to go “right down to the wire”
GG
I thought you had left us. It’s not “self-righteous”, it’s gloating. I haven’t had this much fun in a long time.
Now they’re on about ACORN again. Talk about predictable. It’s the same old tune over and over again.
NYT/CBS Obama 52% McLame 39% Good guys up by 13%
Now it’s Joe the Plumber again. These people are incredible.
Diogenes,
Careful what you wish for, you just might get it!
Then you got to to live with the consequences.
Darn,
They are not talking to lefties who have made up their mind, live in a different country and don’t vote.
Might pay for you to realise this.
741
I’m with you Diogenes. A damn good thrashing is what these conservative types need to bring them back into the real world, (if that’s possible)
746
GG, I know crap when I hear it – and trust me that’s what these people are talking. They are all in total denial…
GG
Actually, I pretty much lose interest once the election happens. I’m one of those “the journey is more important than the destination” people. And as Ron pointed out repeatedly, I’m really more interested in the Repugs getting the boot than Obama getting in. I’m hoping to avoid negatives more than achieve positives.
Fox News just appeals to people who watch Fox News. I don’t think they are convincing many people to switch from supporting Obama to McCain.
It’s not going to be a good day on Wall St. I think the economy has done enough to help Obama. It’s time it started behaving itself and showed a bit more confidence in the new POTUS.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aZRWfr8j_IXc&refer=worldwide
Darn,
I think you just proved my point. They don’t care what you think.
Diogenes,
You are a riddle of outrage and a passion of indetermination. Understanding the consequences of actions taken is a first step to responsibility.
There is a LOT more to come, trust me
Diogenes @ 749
That’s the beauty of this election Diogenes – it really is the journey that’s important this time, because Obama’s arrival as POTUS will be sufficient in itself to change the tenor of world and domestic engagement. And not just because of the symbolism of electing a black president. We only have to look at the way he was received around the world on his trip, and how the vast majority of interested people outside the US want him elected. Not to mention the 89% in the US who want a change in direction. He’ll have a genuine mandate to get stuck in. The bonus is that the financial meltdown will give even greater opportunity for him to make lasting domestic changes because of the necessity for firm action, and because the vested interests are on the outer. Chaos gives great cover for a change agent
At this point I suppose the republicans must be praying (Howard like) for a major terrorist strike somewhere to allow them to rev up the old fear campaign. Its their only chance. I woder if they woudl provoke one if they could?
JV,
Lovely sentiment.
But, I always remember the tosh spewed out when Armstrong walked on the moon about how the world would fundamentally change and that the moment was a cathartic experience for the planet.
Well here we are forty years later and human nature is still human nature.
According to Howard, the terrorists will be celebrating the victory of Obama on Nov 4.
GG
I agree. It’s just different degrees of bad for me.
BTW Do you think Palin’s $150,000 clothes shopping was money well spent? How could they let that one out? It’s three times what “Joe the Average Plumber” earns in a year.
Yeah, pretty much. Hate to be the pessimist (Or realist) but the fundamentals of the world aren’t going to change, Obama or no Obama, economic crisis or no economic crisis.
Well Palin came out and said that all the clothes that are bought are either returned or auctioned for charity. She also disputes the figure of $150,000.
JV
Like Diogenes I want an end to Bush and hope Obama can deliver it. However, while I realise that most Americans are opposed to Bush now, and many always were, the change in government won’t be sufficient for me to simply trust America again. As one of my favourite philosphers said, all that is necessary for the forces of evil to triumph is for men (sic) of good will to say nothing”. The fact is, under George W Bush america did a lot of eveil, adn many americans accepted it, even though it trashed every principle their country was founded on.
My respect for the average American really has taken a dive in recent years. Its one thing that the election was stolen from Gore in 2000, but in 2004 a majority of US voters re-elected Bush despite knowing what he was like. They shoudl have known about Iraq and the building debts they are only now paying for. They really don’t seem to care what they do to the rest of the world. (My apologies to the minority who do care, including a few who post here.) Obama has a lot of bad legacies to repair, of which the economy is only one. I personally think that Americas moral bankruptcy is worse than its economic bankruptcy, and indeed the latter is a consequence of the former. I think the weakening of US power after Bush will be permanent, and it will never regain its position of unquestioned global supremacy. They don’t deseve to.
Don’t forget that the McCain Palin duo is still polling ~45%. That’s far too high for me to believe that America is somehow magically different.
It’s much the same as the last election in Oz. We are still the same country who elected Howie four times. Admittedly, Howie was not GWB but there were a few comparisons. Bush is actually less xenophobic in his immigration policies than Howard.
Diogenes,
Re Palin’s clothing – Passionately don’t care.
Re Joe the Plumber – Do you approve of the Obama “we are in to change you can believe in” Democrat hit job on a guy that asked a question?
Somehow I reckon you would have to dig much deeper in Howard than Bush to find some humanity. Dubya was an idiot.
GG
I find that a bit surprising. I seem to recall you having a bit to say about Michelle Obama’s “lobster, caviar and champagne snack”. Remind me how that story turned out…
GG – I never thought walking on the moon would change a thing. The analogy is empty. As an example in practical terms of the importance of this election, if Obama gets to the White House, there will be a collective sigh of relief from all those who want a more reasonable foreign (and domestic) policy from the US. Obama being there as a symbol of tolerance and the application intelligent reason to emerging problems rather than resorting to immediate brute force, should have the effect of altering the way the US is perceived by others, including reducing the rage that leads to terrorist acts against westerners. If so, we will all, including erstwhile co-belligerents like Australians, be just a little safer. Only Obama offers that possibility. That to me is sufficient reason to be very excited at his impending large victory.
Socrates
Yes, the legacy of the Bush years is going to be long-lasting. I would like to see Obama working to strengthen the UN (although I know the structural problems), and/or working with multilateral groups of nations of necessary to bring the US’s power and wealth to bear as a force for good around the world. If the rest of the world sees that happening with less a much aggressive pursuit of self-interest, then US influence can emerge again without being a threatening one.
Diogenes,
My hypocrisy is not as bad as yours.
Women, clothes WTF? Talk to your missus for a re education experience.
Lobster and living the high life. I dare Michelle to admit it’s true.
‘if necessary’ that should be in 768.
You blokes don’t seriously believe they went to the moon do you?
In 1969 they hadn’t even invented the pocket calculator. They didn’t even have colour TV. I have seen unedited footage which clearly shows the flag being blown by wind.
It was a con.
JV,
I accept you stood above the hysteria, just like you are doing now.
Centre,
Are you describing the moon landing or Obama’s campaign?
I’m referring to other famous American cons like WMD’s. As for Obama, He’s going super.;)
GG
Actually, I don’t care about the $150,000 Palin spent and I don’t care about Michelle’s lunch even if she had it. I am concerned about the possibility of double standards. I am even more concerned that an intelligent man like you fell for Rush’s BS.
BTW As a horse man, is tomorrow’s Cox Plate field the worst in living memory? I can’t think of a Cox Plate field with so few Group 1 winners ever.
Diogenes I agree. I like Raheeb and last week Toorak winner.
Thanks GG, although I might allow a quiet little ‘huzzah’ to escape on 5 November if things go according to the script and the Kid wins.
Wasn’t the moon landing filmed somewhere in the Nevada desert?
JV, I wouldn’t bet it was filmed on the moon?
Diogenes,
There is a difference between being wealthy and flaunting it. Clothes are like costumes for political figures and I have no problem with individuals having the best available. It’s like have the latest technology etc. Lobster and caviar is different IMHO.
Regardless, the race will throw up a winner. Princess Coup for me.
I love a good conspiracy theory. Where are the camera people, the set designers and the property stewards for this fake moon landing. Nary a whisper apart from unsubatantiated supposition.
My goodness, next you’ll be saying an African American will be POTUS in our lifetime.
What about the lizard track in the ‘moon dust’ before they put a foot down? Or it could have been the mark of a sand rake prong.
GG – They didn’t use many technicians – the film quality and lighting was terrible. But the ones they did use, well they haven’t been heard of since have they? Eh? Their bodies are probably underground in that facility with the aliens the authorities dissected and kept secret.
Ramussen
National
O-52 M-45
i.e. no change
also from Ramussen:
“Every week it seems to get worse for House Republicans. As we will demonstrate below, we have expanded the number of possible to likely net gains for Democrats from our previous 15 to 20 to a new and rather astounding 22 to 27 seats.”
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/political_commentary/commentary_by_larry_j_sabato/house_race_update_democratic_domination_continues
Of course it is the Senate which is far more crucial.
Battle Ground
O-49
M-46
O is steady, McCain Up one
anyone noticed the O doesnt drop below 49 too often?
thats right dave
also research2000 and some of the tv polls have a democrat bias, IPP, AP and Battleground have a republican bias.
Ramussen is neither.
In Ramussen O has not gone below 50 for a loooong time
looking at todays four strategic vision polls and noticing how heavily they bias to the republicans, I’d be worried about Georgia if I was McCain.
Insider Advantage has Obama leading 48-47 in Georgia, so I’m now counting it as a swing state and including it in my aggregates list.
strange you should mention Georgia
Inside Advantage/POll Position Poll
Obama, 48 percent
McCain, 47 percent
woah
Damn you William
where will the blue march stop – Kansas?
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1008/14895.html
according to this Obama has a ten point lead in Ohio (third poll in two days to show this) but its basically tied in Florida, hanging chad country.
diog, are we electing a potus or an african witch doctor to cure the us ills…. Santiago aeropuerto
SNIP: Unproductive comment deleted – The Management.
Match point #9836. I mean how MANY times can one campaign stuff it up? If it isn’t McCain, it is the loony wackos who follow him …..
Good call Dio
…….
Yes, we do hope she does …..
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/24/obama-arrives-in-hawaii_n_137536.html
juliem
What a surprise! McCain’s biggest story for the week is a shameless race-baiting by a lunatic loser supporter. And McCain and Palin latched onto the story like the lemmings they are and both rang her to give support to the poor little darling. I’m interested to hear what their response is now.
Poor old Matty Drudge, who trumpeted the story, has a new headline. SHE MADE IT UP.
Today’s National Public Radio poll of 1000 RV in battleground states conducted by Greenberg, Quinlan, and Rosner shows Obama leading McCain 52-41 compared to the same poll in 2004 showing Bush leading Kerry 49-45. Obama is leading among Independents by 12. Can’t tell if they have done any earlier polls this year. The states polled were: CO, IA, IN, FL, MI, MN, MO, NC, NH, NM, NV, OH, PA, VA, WI.
Obviously, the inclusion of currently deep blue states like NH, IA, MI AND WI would inflate the numbers, and so the remaining states would be much closer than 11%.
All the same, G, Q, R provides an interesting qualitative speculation for the 15 point turnaround from 2004:
“Obama has emerged as the stronger leader.
This is being solidified by a growing intensity of communication and voter contact where Obama’s campaign enjoys substantial advantages on traditional forms of campaigning, like TV advertising and door-to-door knocking, phone calls and mail, but also on all forms of internet-based communication.
The financial crisis was a turning point in the election – but largely because it clarified the basis for choosing the president and the qualities and policy approach each candidate brought to the moment.”
I find the last sentence particularly compelling as a counter to the CW that Obama is being swept along to an easy victory in the wake of the international financial crisis, which I reckon is similar to Cry-Baby Bill Hayden’s comment in 2003 (while giving Hawke the middle-finger salute on front page of “Daily Telegraph”) that a drover’s dog could have lead Labor to victory.
Julie,
You’re on fire this morning!
You’ve already done all the posts I was intending to do, and it goes without saying, done them better than I can.
Whoops Bill Hadyen’s comment was in 1983, not 2003 in my #800 comment.
#767:
There is nothing ‘reasonable’ about cross border strikes and raids into Pakistan, the Bush policy Obama wants to continue.
Bushfire Bill,
Here’s some accelerant to stoke up your fires of passion,
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/why-turnbull-is-playing-for-keeps-20081024-5870.html
Apparently, Turnbull is a big winner.
Sorry,
Wrong thread.
RCP national average up to Obama +7.9 this morning, just 0.3 off it’s highest point in the campaign
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/us/general_election_mccain_vs_obama-225.html
I think in the next few days some swing states like Ohio, Missouri and Florida will all solidify for Obama. I think that the national numbers going back out to some of their largest gaps is a sign that close state polls will start shifting his way, so on election day he will have 4 or 5 point leads in those states.
I just can’t see how Obama will fail to win Missouri, Ohio and Florida if he is almost even in North Dakota, Montana and Georgia.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1008/14921.html
“44 percent of non-Hispanic white voters presently support Obama — the highest number for a Democrat since 47 percent of whites backed Jimmy Carter in 1976.”
whitey is voting for the n*gger
Nah, that’s just half the white folk voting for his half-white side.
If you’re in need of doing some purging watch thsi advert by Michele Bachmann (only one “l”, what’s up with that?)… she is the one who called BO “Un-American”.
Apparently this is her “apology ad”. Which is odd, given she doesn’t actually apologises, but seems to actually just restate her views again…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/24/bachmann-tapes-apology-ad_n_137689.html
LOL! “If you don’t vote for me you are voting against liberty, freedom, your heart, and against your children”.
I don’t think it’s odd at all. People with her sorts of views don’t see themselves as being wrong, no matter what anyone else says. All she’ll do is keep saying she was misinterpreted, despite still believing she never was.
Palin has discovered the main obstacle for the repugs.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27364991/
811 SHowsOn – nothing like a good versus bad political debate! At least she is looking like losing – faith in America restored.
She is like Palin and Bush. She thinks she is in a constant battle of good versus evil. It is not surprising that people who view the world that way end up completely embarrassing themselves. Their world-view is too simplistic, life is just a lot more complicated than that.
Apologies if this has already been mentioned, but according to the NYT, Sarah Palin’s travelling hair stylist was paid $10,000 in the first two weeks of October. Her job is described in the Republican Party record as “communications consulting”.
What, ten large to talk to Palin’s hair for two weeks?
(Curiouser and curiouser.)
Palin is right. Bush’s unpopularity is McCain’s main problem. But it’s kind of hard to criticise a man you voted with 90% of the time. No-ones going to buy it. The old “mavericky maverick” line gets trotted out again.
It turns out that the “Cut-Nut” (Ashley Todd) is a Ron Paul supporter who went over to McCain. The neocons are really upset with Matty Drudge for leading with the story and dropping the ball. Of course, they neglect to mention the McCain campaigns role in publicising the race-bait smear.
http://wonkette.com/403810/mccain-campaign-pushed-cut-nut-mutilation-myth-on-media
810
It seems Bachmann is happy for the free marketeers to continue leading us towards financial armageddon.
Every time I hear nut cases like her I understand a bit more about how something as sinister and evil as McCarthyism was allowed to take root in the US in the fifties. Fortunately these loonies are about to lose power for a long time.
Bachmann is only 3 points behind in the polls.
Sure, but she won 50 / 42 at the last election, and her electorate voted 57 / 42 for Bush in 2004.
Bachmann’s opponent has oodles of money now and the RNC have pulled out of advertising for her.
Now that McCain has lost, isn’t it time he started campaigning for a few marginal Congressmen and Senators like Bob Dole did when he knew he would lose?
A “B” for effort.
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/10/college-republi.html
Indeed, but my point is that this isn’t some kind of ‘game changing’ election. The Republicans are definitely not dead and America has not changed.
And it was all going so well.
http://74.125.95.104/search?q=cache:ZRQVtES3pF8J:lifeinthefield.com/blogs/ashley-todd+Ashley-Todd&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&client=iceweasel-a
If the Republicans lose, that will be a huge change.
Of course they won’t be “dead”. The Democrats suffered some big loses in 2002, but recovered them all in 2006.
I’m a cold-hearted bastard but even I loved this story.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1008/Early_voting_in_Evansville.html?showall
Oz 823
[Indeed, but my point is that this isn’t some kind of ‘game changing’ election. The Republicans are definitely not dead and America has not changed].
If you think there is fundamentally no difference between the election of Obama/Biden or McCain/Palin you just haven’t been paying attention. There is a world of difference. But if you’ve made up your mind, I am not going to try and change it.
The Repubs may not be politically dead if they lose, but trust me, for a long time they’ll feel like they are.
At least 8 years!
Righto, 10 days out, and as I said I would, here is my prediction, add it to the comp:
Obama 322 (picks up CO, IN, IA, NV, NM, OH, VA)
McCain 216 (holds MO, NC, FL, MT, ND)
America is far more than who is in the White House.
830
[America is far more than who is in the White House].
That’s a motherhood statement that no-one could disagree with. But whoever is in the whitehouse sure makes a hell of a difference to people’s lives, not only in America but across the world. For starters 4000+ young Americans would still be alive today if Gore had won and Bush and his neocons weren’t able to invade Iraq.
Darn I think you’re forgetting the countless Iraqis that would also be alive… unless they’re not as important!
832
Itep Of course they are just as important – to any decent person. But not apparently to Bush and his neocons, who liked to refer to them as colateral damage.
Well, we should also consider the few hundred thousand Iraqis who died between 1991 and 2001 due to inadequate health care and sanitation. PART of this has to be blamed on the economic sanctions imposed by the U.N., and enforced by the U.S. Air Force.
I don’t want to start a huge argument, but a lot of innocent lives have been lost in Iraq over a very long period of time, which should be a concern to all progressive people. We can’t say innocent people started being killed only 5 years go.
Colorado is increasingly becoming a sure thing for Obama
New poll:
Obama 52
McCain 40
Obama drank that milkshake ages ago.
According to Intrade, Obama has an 85% chance of winning it. Over the last week it hasn’t been lower than 82%.
If actual polls are more convincing, McCain’s weighted average score there hasn’t changed for the last month. It is just a flatline:
http://www.pollster.com/polls/co/08-co-pres-ge-mvo.php
Obama has left Hawaii!
He’s in Nevada and New Mexico tomorrow.
Latest Newsweek Poll:
Obama 53
McCain 40
In The Washington Post on 25 Oct., The Cuban American National Foundation, the largest Cuban exile organisation, endorses…….wait for it…………….Barack Obama for Prez!
From CANF Chair, Jorge Mas Santos:
“Both presidential candidates have made clear that they want to help the Cuban people achieve freedom. But Barack Obama’s forward-looking and proactive approach toward empowering the Cuban people is more in line with these proposals than John McCain’s vow to continue the Bush administration’s policy.”
Juliem will lol, even rofl, about this one!
All the same, I still won’t be adding FL to my Obama potential pickup list due to the FL voting system being decimated by a despicable “budget cut” reduction of the number and opening hours of polling places by the same Repub state legislators who gave us the hanging chad in the 2000 election.
Early voters needed to stand in line for 4-6 hours this week. We’ve got to thank the gods or whomever for the independence of our AEC. I’ve staffed the early voting office in my NSW city for a few elections, and 5 minutes would be the longest anyone would have to wait. On election day, it’s never been longer than 10 min. in the busiest CBD polling place. Further proof why the Repubs are the real, pro-American democracy party.
Oh dear, it seems the McCain camp was involved in concocting that fake “McCain Supporter is assaulted” news story! Any decent Republicans should disavow this lot immediately – McCain has sold his soul to the forces of darkness!
838
jjulian – The polling place at the Melbourne Town Hall is infamous for its long queues on polling day – anything up to 30 or 40 minutes or more – but nothing approaching four or more hours like in Florida. That’s just a disgraceful lack of customer service. I can’t understand how they’re allowed to get away with it.
839
evan – What is the evidence for that claim?.
I still don’t understand why there’s no national independent electoral commission in the US and a uniform system of voting. Surely there’s no basis for allowing 4 hour queues to vote and if there’s that problem the national government should be able to take direct action to rectify it.
Darn,
Evan is not “Progressive” enough to have facts to back his wild rantings.
Let’s wait for Evan’s answer before we proceed to the abuse stage, GG. Although it would be helpful if Evan would provide a link when he leaves a comment like 839.
Here you go:
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/24/mccain.sticker/?iref=hpmostpop
842
[I still don’t understand why there’s no national independent electoral commission in the US and a uniform system of voting].
Itep – I agree. For the country that prides itself on taking democracy to the world it’s a sick joke. At least in Australia our electoral system is something we can all be proud of..
Because the right of states is extremely important the Americans. They associate federal intervention in anything as a symptom of big government. This means that the presidential election is really 50 state elections that happen to be tallied together via the electoral college.
But I completely agree with you, they could end a whole heap of voter intimidation, abuse, and confusion if they had a bi-partisan federal body that set all the rules for the election.
Consider that they have a bi-partisan Presidential debates commission which we don’t have. So they are one up on us there. Here essentially whoever is P.M. has a veto power over the conditions of debates with the leader of the opposition.
The McCain campaign didn’t start the story, but they certainly kicked it on via their cable TV surrogates.
Oh dear… sounds similar to the silly Lindsay pamphlets saga from our election. Desperate party hacks taking matters into their own hands and damaging the overall campaign.
The answer is that the US is a federation, and all elections are conducted at state level or lower. There is no national election authority because there are no national elections. The only “national” positions are the President and the Vice-President, but they are elected by the Electoral College, not directly by the people.
I thought he was just referring to this:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/24/ashley-todd-story-pushed_n_137710.html
The McCain aid simply made up the part about the attacker saying “You’re with the McCain campaign? I’m going to teach you a lesson.” It never happened.
Well I agree with states rights to a certain extent. That in no way extends to matters relating to national parliament, which logically should remain solely within the powers of the national parliament to legislate in relation to. The election of President is something which effects the nation, so as such the national parliament, clearly should determine the way the President is elected.
So,
Evan is “Progressive” after all. Nice to know.
Ashely Todd made the whole thing up:
Associated Press
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iidrMKZwVNDDlEtkssY6t1xxhg9QD94169T80
AFP:
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gjY5dUb9JCwiXuOMQ5fZb00lYA-A
CNN:
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/24/mccain.sticker/?iref=hpmostpop
Now would you like to have the dignity to retract your statement GG?
Yes but the electoral college is merely a formality in a practical sense.
And some more:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/10/24/172956/99/476/641269
Well I guess it does via the constitution. But the actual administration is left to the states.
I think it is a terrible system. They should have a single body so that voting conditions are uniform including the nature of the ballots! They should also have uniform voting times, of course the times will be different because of the time zones, but some states close their polls at 6 PM and others 10 PM local time. That is a ridiculous variation, it should be the same everywhere.
jj,
Spent the day bushwalking near Charlotte’s Pass so we got up early and yes, the closer it gets to the election, the more on fire I will become
….. I am an early bird not a night owl, so you will always see my first post of the day (unless I’ve something going on where I can’t get on for some reason) with a 5 or a 6 in the hour slot of the time. gotta dash for now, will catch up on this topic and more after I put my kids to bed …….
Dio @ 826,
Dio, I give you more credit than that
…. but geez thanks for that story, thats a winner …. and I totally totally agree with that suggestion about turnout too 
Darn @ 827,
The value of the US system as vs the Australia one (in this particular instance) is that the party who LOSES can’t march around still pretending like they are leading the parade. The Republicans won’t be able to do a bloody thing about it and it couldn’t be sweeter music to my ears
……
injuddstree @ 829, got it down, no worries
The problem is that it would not be possible to put presidential elections under the control of a national elections commission without abolishing the Electoral College, which would require amending the Constitution, a process nearly as difficult in the US it is here. When people vote in presidential elections they do not actually vote for McCain or Obama. They vote for their state’s delegates to the Electoral College. That is clearly a state election, and a bill which “nationalised” a state election would undoubtedly be unconstitutional.
jj @ 838,
Glad that some Cuban officials are coming on board, you would think that this will help bring the demographic as a whole into the fold. I think that with this and the Great Schlep, etc. that Florida is going to go Obama’s way in the end. However, I understand people’s fears in this regard. The blot of FL 2000 is a stain that will sit on history books forever. I must admit, myself, a tiny bit of fear in this regard.
However, the nice thing about this year? We don’t NEED Florida to put a Democrat in the WH this time so they can go get stuffed if they don’t want to party with the majority of the country LOL …..
Wasn’t the New York Times supposed to have been publishing some amazing expose today? I see nothing controversial on their website…
ltep,
Voting is one of the responsibilities given to the states. The Federal government can’t legally step in to do anything with it or about it. The US constitution specifically mentions certain things, ex. right to free speech. Ammendments 9 and 10 to the constitution note the following (from Wikipedia):
It is one of the other of those 2 claused in the Constitution that legally give voting powers and organizations to the states. The constitution was written that way so that all things would be covered by someone and nothing would be left out. Since voting directions and regulations weren’t mentioned elsewhere in the Constitution, that means they default to the states. I don’t know the wording of the Aussie constitution but I don’t know if this country has a similar “default” clause in it?
ltep @ 842, I’ve answered this question for you but there was some word in it that William’s filter didn’t like so you will have to wait to read the answer, sorry …..
Grant @ 863, someone posted this yesterday or the day before (earlier on this thread). Just look back to Thursday and Friday posts for some URL that has NYT as its source ….. I know this as I read it from someone else’s post just can’t be bothered at present to search back to find it …..
Just as a matter of interest, has any delegate elected to the electoral college ever reneged and voted for the other candidate (presumably, there is nothing to legally prevent them from doing so if they wish). .
I believe one did it as recently as 2004
darn, I don’t know that. Perhaps a search through this site OR Wikipedia might answer that question?
http://presidentelect.org/e2008.html
Perhaps this was what Evan was alluding to earlier today? As the link that you posted, Evan, I didn’t find anything outright in that story, but this one does go further …
Darn 867: They’re called ‘faithless electors’, and there’s been a bunch of them. Wiki article here.
RCP has moved Indiana at some point today into Obama’s column in the no tossup states map
What will be the next one to fall? I reckon Georgia and if that goes, I’m changing my EV guess as right now, this state of the RCP no tossup states map is my guess @ 375 …..
It happens quite often, they are called “faithless electors”, they are delegates who vote for someone else when the votes are tallied in the Senate:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector
In 2004 the faithless elector wrote down “John Edward” which was accepted as a vote for “John Edwards”, instead of John Kerry.
Let’s say Obama wins, I wonder if a Republican delegate will vote for Palin instead of McCain.
If you go by Intrade it should be North Dakota, which is currently on 38% for Obama.
Indiana has shot up to 60% for Obama, which is the highest it has ever been. It was on 55% this morning.
Julie, Thanks for your insights about Florida.
Regarding America’s voting system. It’s complicated in that each County in California has its own Registrar of Voters overseen by a Board of Governors. I missed out on voting in the 2006 Congressional election because of a clerical error, and it took me a visit in person last March plus three phone calls from Oz since to get absentee ballot mailed. Their tiny office was back of a mail-centre in San Bernardino and only open mornings with a handful of staff. San Bernardino County is the largest in America, roughly the geographical size and population of South Australia. All levels of government in California have been under heavy financial stress for many years. The election system is a County administration responsibility which cops state-wide budget cuts.
They must have the same County election structure in Florida because in 2000 the County Official in charge of the famous chad-counting was a Democrat who kept on counting, even though the Sec. of State Republican had ordered it to cease.
Even worse is the fact that ballot papers are designed at county level. Thus it was that a Palm Beach county official, a Democrat, designed the infamous “butterfly ballot” that caused 6,000 elderly Jewish voters to vote for Pat Buchanan when they meant to vote for Al Gore, thus costing Gore the presidency and giving us all the horrors of the Bush (mal-)Administration, culminating in the current GFC.
One further question on the “faithless electors”, is it possible to identify them so the party can deal with them, or is it a secret ballot.
That system is just crazy. It just sounds completely open to screw ups, either accidental or deliberate.
Today McCain will be in New Mexico in the morning, and Iowa in the afternoon / evening. This is further proof his campaign is a disorganised joke. According to Pollster.com, Obama is up by 7 in N.M. and 11.5 in Iowa.
At this stage he has to just HOPE he wins Nevada, Colorado and Missouri, and instead has to concentrate on Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida. There is no point campaigning in any states that have less than 12 votes. N.M. only has 5!
Good call, Adam. I’d forgotten how terrible it must have been for that woman to know she’d cost Gore the Prez.. Well, to be more accurate, she and Jed Bush and Ralph Nader (who’s out there again doing his best to hand to the Repubs this election, trying to break Ross Perot’s record for shafting a major party).
A very minor point, which my quirky mind hit upon.
Does anyone know why Obama was wearing a wedding ring in this photo? It must have been several years before he married, or even met Michelle:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/30/us/politics/30obama.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Darn, I believe voting in the EC is done by show of hands. In fact the EC never meets as a body. Its members meet in their state capitals and vote there. (These rules were written in 1788, when travel from say NH to Philadelphia, in winter, was quite difficult.)
New Mex. is at least understandable, if unwise, because he’s from bordering state. However, Iowa is hopeless because he didn’t compete in their Primary. Obama’s nomination is due largely to his excellent organisation to win the Iowa caucuses, and doubtless it’s still significantly larger than McCain’s there.
dyno,
That’s his high school graduation class ring. All US high schools have them, and I kept mine until a few years ago!
I have a memory of Democrats protesting in the Senate in 2000 as the votes were counted. The President of the Senate (the then V.P.) conducts the vote, i.e. Gore conducted the vote to elect Bush President.
Aha, thanks jj
I gave mine to my nephew because he dug the neat black onyx carving in the centre of it and didn’t care that the date was during the Punic Wars!
No River Murrays, dyno
jjulian
the linga franca is ‘no wuckers’ as in no wucking
Aha, My 85 year old father-in-law must be out of date. Cheers!
He also frequently call other drivers wuckfits.
Here’s an interesting transcript of the actual counting of the electoral votes in 2000. This is normally a formality, but many of the Democrats attempted to challenge the Florida vote, but Gore couldn’t allow them to do it. Part of the transcripts of the proceedings is at the bottom, this is what I watched back in 2000:
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0101/06/se.02.html
That last part “but hey”, was Gore essentially saying “T