Since our previous episode we’ve had individual polls from red states Georgia and Montana showing Barack Obama narrowly in front, so they’re now included in the polling aggregates. However, John McCain leads in both due to the overall polling picture from the past few weeks. The other remarkable development has been an Obama blowout in Ohio, underscoring a picture of Democratic strength in the rust belt states.
| Obama | McCain | Sample | D-EV | R-EV | |
| Michigan | 54.7 | 39.4 | 3005 | 17 | |
| Washington | 54.9 | 40.1 | 3379 | 11 | |
| Maine | 54.5 | 40.0 | 2185 | 4 | |
| Minnesota | 53.3 | 41.8 | 3677 | 10 | |
| Iowa | 52.6 | 41.7 | 3530 | 7 | |
| Pennsylvania | 52.2 | 41.7 | 5505 | 21 | |
| Wisconsin | 51.5 | 42.1 | 3490 | 10 | |
| New Hampshire | 51.5 | 42.3 | 3305 | 4 | |
| New Mexico | 50.5 | 43.3 | 2927 | 5 | |
| Colorado | 50.8 | 44.3 | 3450 | 9 | |
| Virginia | 50.9 | 44.7 | 3777 | 13 | |
| Ohio | 48.7 | 43.0 | 4337 | 20 | |
| Nevada | 50.0 | 45.4 | 3418 | 5 | |
| Florida | 48.2 | 45.3 | 5021 | 27 | |
| North Dakota | 45.5 | 44.7 | 1206 | 3 | |
| Missouri | 47.4 | 46.5 | 4050 | 11 | |
| Indiana | 47.4 | 47.0 | 3828 | 11 | |
| North Carolina | 47.2 | 48.9 | 4564 | 15 | |
| Montana | 44.8 | 48.7 | 2628 | 3 | |
| Georgia | 45.6 | 50.0 | 3530 | 15 | |
| West Virginia | 42.7 | 51.0 | 3622 | 5 | |
| Others | - | - | - | 175 | 137 |
| RCP/Total | 49.9 | 43.9 | - | 363 | 175 |
So who’s going to win then? The polls of course leave little room for doubt. However, there are a couple of items of conventional wisdom floating around which suggest they might not be telling the full story, one way or another.
• The Bradley effect. A compelling paper by Dan Hopkins of Harvard University examines the popular notion that polls overrate the performance of black candidates in biracial contests due to white voters’ reluctance to appear illiberal when interrogated by pollsters. Hopkins finds the effect was a serious factor into the 1980s, most famously when black Democratic candidate Tom Bradley failed to win the Californian gubernatorial election in 1982, but has ceased to be so. Pew Research charts a corresponding decline in the number of respondents willing to admit they would not vote for a black candidate, from 16 per cent in 1984 to 6 per cent. Hopkins notes a very sudden decline in the Bradley effect (he prefers the “Wilder effect”, after Virginia Governor Douglas Wilder) “at about the time that welfare reform silenced one critical, racialized issue”.
• The reverse Bradley effect. Strictly speaking, a “reverse Bradley effect” would involve voters telling pollsters they were voting for McCain or were undecided when they were in fact set on Obama, which is plainly not on the cards. Far more likely is that turnout of black voters is being underestimated in pollsters’ determinations of “likely voters”, which in many cases go on whether they voted last time rather than what they say they will do this time. Whatever methods are being used to account for the certainty of higher black turnout, I’m pretty confident they are overly conservative. When a pollster is required to explain inaccuracy after the event, “I was going on past experience” makes for a more professional sounding excuse than “I made a wrong guess”. I haven’t studied this systematically, but the one example I have looked at has proved to be an eyebrow-raiser: the most recent SurveyUSA poll of Pennsylvania has 10 per cent of black voters among its overall sample, whereas this paper from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies tells us it was 13 per cent in 2004. Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight provides support for this and related impressions in taking to task pollsters who have gaps of 4 to 6 per cent between results for “registered” and “likely” voters.
• The late Republican surge. I recently heard it said that Republican candidates tend to come home strong in the last week or two of campaigning. Remembering how much of Bill Clinton’s lead vanished shortly before the 1992 election, I thought this sounded plausible and went burrowing through the archives for evidence. The following chart plots the last 15 days of polling at presidential elections from 1992 onwards, day 15 being the election result. I have used composites of polling obtained from Real Clear Politics for 2000 and 2004; Gallup tracking polls for 1996; and a list of various pollsters’ results I found in the New York Times for 1992.
The case of 1996 stands out, but this might well point to a general inaccuracy in the Gallup series I was using rather than a late surge to Bob Dole (unfortunately I could only locate one poll from the final week). Beyond that, the chart provides pretty thin gruel if you’re in the market for a McCain comeback in the last 10 days. The 1992 Bush recovery was less dramatic than I remembered it once I removed Gallup from the equation, which exasperatingly shifted from “registered” to “likely” voters in the final week, eliminating much of Bill Clinton’s lead at a stroke. If anything the trends from 2000 and 2004 point the other way.
• Front-runner decline. The aforementioned paper on the Wilder/Bradley effect by Dan Hopkins informs us that polls “typically overstate support for front-runners”, which is demonstrated in the scatter plots under “Figure 3” (see right at the back). These suggest a candidate like McCain who is on about 42 per cent is probably being underestimated by as much as 2 per cent, while a candidate like Obama on 50 per cent is probably being represented accurately – unless he’s black, in which case he will suffer a Bradley effect of a bit over 1 per cent.
• Advertising. The Washington Post informs us that the cashed-up Obama campaign is fielding “as many as seven commercials for every one aired by Republican Sen. John McCain”.
My guess is that point one will be comfortably countered by point two; point three is worth little if anything; point four might help McCain close the gap by 2 per cent, but some of this gloss should be taken off after accounting for point five. In sum, there seems little reason not to take the polls more-or-less at face value. That being so, my final prediction is that Obama will win every state where my polling aggregates currently have him ahead except North Dakota, where the result is derived from two small sample polls, one from an agency of little repute. The margin in Florida is narrow enough that front-runner decline might be expected to account for it, but I find it hard to believe Obama would fail to carry so marginal a state when he’s up by eight points nationally. That makes it 375 electoral votes for Obama and 163 for McCain.
1,057 Comments
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849,
Who really cares?
….
LOG in now, http://www.cspan.org …… Obama and Clinton on LIVE as I type this …..
Things are getting serious now
http://www.theonion.com/content/opinion/a_vote_for_my_husband_is_a_vote
To put it in her words… she is just like any other female human
juliem – I agree, CNN have been excellent with coverage this year.
GG
Please tell me this wasn’t you. I believe we’ve discussed this kind of behaviour before.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2008/1028081mccain1.html
Is she back on Oxycodone or hydrocodone or perhaps both?
If Obama wins he should make a DVD of the coverage, the sales he will get could then be used for 2012 lol.
CNN are still biased towards the democrats though just as Fox is heavily biased to Republicans. Most media outlets pander to one audience or another because in America they have so many news outlets people can pick and choose.
CNN here is a different feed than the US, so does anyone know if the CNN election coverage will be entirely from the US feed?
Anyone have a view on who is the least biased US political news source?
Dario,
They should pick up CNN US feed pretty early. I was on the Foxtel online tv guide earlier today and they show (can’t check now as I’d interrupt others watching the cricket) the CNN feed for the election starting at either 10 or 11am Wednesday from memory …… Fox start at 9am. Both of those are the official start times but you can bet that one or both of them will already be on air anyways with coverage prior to that point. I plan to have CNN on as soon as the kids leave for school LOL ……. (assuming they’ll be showing something, they did for the conventions; CNN International suspended their regular programming and picked up the CNN US coverage)
We do get CNN International here and they broadcast out of Hong Kong.
Socrates, that is a loaded question. What side of the political spectrum do you support? If you are not a rusted on Liberal, i.e you don’t want McCain to win, then CNN is your go. Otherwise, Fox is your go.
Cheers julie, that’s what I thought
I, and Ronster, find the Daily Kos very fair and balanced. HuffPo is a bit right wing for me. Counterpunch is a good balance on the mild left.
I just found this gem buried in the depths of article on a British website.
Now, I hadn’t heard that anywhere about registration in Ohio. If someone else can verify this story from something that they read, can you please post the URL?
Hear, Hear
http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2008/10/court_says_homeless_must_be_al.html
There’s a PDF of the court decision linked in that article.
867, thanks much
… now I know that the UK site was on the level … when an international newspaper reports something I didn’t already know, I like to verify it from a US source ….
And that’s happened where, exactly?
Writing off the Republicans would be an extremely dangerous move.
I should restate that. Writing off the Republicans has a political party, barring the outcome of this election, would be a dangerous move.
For those interested – received info Channel 9 will be airing live coverage of the election between 11.00am(EST)/10.30(CST) and 3.00pm(EST)/2.30pm(CST). I am not sure what coverage Channel 9 is linked with – CBS? NBC?
I’m not sure about WA yet.
juliem 862
Thanks I do read CNN already and find it reasonable; I also regularly read Krugman’s blog in the NY Times. Sometimes when I wonder if these are too unfair to the republicans (not that thats a bad thing
I often find myself checking the BBC. I can’t afford to read Fox unless I plan to replace a smashed monitor.
Pretty sure NBC is linked to 7, so probably CBS or ABC (US)
Socrates @ 872,
Often what I do if I want to get a wide range of articles is just to go to Google News. If you link to the US news, they have a special category called “Election” and cross list all of the election articles in there. I misunderstood your original post, I thought you were talking about Aussie TV coverage that was US in nature
…
for those interested
mumble has a post up on the ballot paper for NY
quite instructive-though as mumble notes very confusing
(didnt know the ballot paper was in spanish as well)
Gusface,
My California absentee ballot was English on one side and Spanish on the other. There are so many Spanish speakers in Southern Cal. that they have multiple Spanish-only tv and radio stations. When driving around area where my mom and siblings live, I always listen to Spanish radio for the great Salsa music.
#871 is that Australian EST or American EST?
So if someone can explain, “Conservative” and “Working families” (lol) are proxy tickets set up by McCain/Obama’s respective supporters and the votes from them flow through to those candidates?
JJ
The candidate list is interesting to say the least.The english/spanish thingy was news to me.Do all Gvt publications have to be bi-lingual?
One query I had was why the Supreme court justices are in both the dems and pugs column.Please explain?
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_kKfQ3nnq_ps/SQkNh6MBUrI/AAAAAAAAAFc/XPB3tFmeyDE/s1600-h/NY-ballot-2008.png
Im referring specifically to martin schonfield and marcy khan
tanks
I presume they’re both endorsing the same candidate?
I didn’t even know that judges were elected. How’s that for division of power.
Gusface (875) mentioned the NY ballot paper.
The US Studies Centre (University of Sydney) has an election watch site:
http://uselectionwatch.org.au/
It features a sample of several ballots at:
http://uselectionwatch.org.au/elections-101/american-ballots
This is so unfair. The poor bank CEOs can’t use all of the Federal bailout money for bonuses. They’ve done such a good job, they really deserve it. This is what happens when the cancer of socialism metastasises to the free market. It’s the end of civilisation as we know it.
NYAG Cuomo warns nine banks about bonus payments
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081029/bs_nm/us_bonuses_banks_cuomo
Er I just thought of something.
What’s stopping someone from printing off a whole lot of ballot papers and then sneaking them in to the booth?
Gusface @ 879
Yes, all Californian state government public documents and information brochures are printed with Spanish/English sides.
Sorry to admit that I’m as stumped as you are by the New York ballot, but thanks for linking it. Fortunately, NY is hugely safe for Obama with a complicated ballot like that one. Yet again, Pollbludger commentors provide a mine of information.
BTW, good to see the Philadelphia win Series. My best mate from Vietnam lives there, and it’s been a long time between major-sport celebration drinks for him and the City of Brotherly Love (not counting “Rocky” championship bouts, of course! :>)
Diogenes at # 883
Very droll, Dio—-very droll indeed!
the Peoples Republic of San Francisco also has Chinese characters on its ballot
Good to see.
What kind of a country has it’s judges voted for by the general public? Are they going to vote for their doctors and engineers?
they vote for sherrif etc…
They vote for their auditor general, their sheriffs, their head plumber, the neighbourhood postman…
Ok, at least the first two.
sheriff…..heheh
cue blazing saddles
Diogenes I imagine it’s because they consider it the only true way to completely separate the 3 bodies of government from one another.
ltep
Fair enough. It looks a bit open to populist community rage sentences though. I’m guessing the judge on OJs first trial is out looking for a job.
Mind you, the voted upon judges are those at a state level and below. Federal judges are appointed.
I agree Diogenes, I think there are problems in our appointments process but would never choose to have judges be elected. Others would disagree.
Juliem, how exactly do US political scientists explain away that abomination of the separation of powers?
Aussieguru01 – I have had to give up watching Fixed News, even for the comedy value.
My blood pressure couldn’t take it any more – they have become absolutely sinister in their desperation. They are convinced that their continual deningration of Obama is working a treat.
I’ve decided I get less stress and enjoy just reading William’s list, Juliem’s and other positive posters comments at PB. Thank goodness for this site.
And the thought of American citizen Rupert Murdoch presenting the Boyer Lectures for ABC is definitely a distinct anger conduit. What are they doing – I believe he is going to tell us how we are heading in the wrong direction. Doncha just love him!!!
ltep and juliem
Yeah, on further reflection the Supreme Court judge appointments are the most crooked, partisan and shamelessly political positions in the country. There is no separation of powers there. It’s all a bit weird.
ltep @ 895,
I can’t give you an explanation. I’m sure that there is one, but I’ve never been big on analysis of the judiciary so I wouldn’t know what it was …….
Ponting must be really desperate …. he’s just brought himself into bowl and the last time I saw him bowl was in the 2005 Ashes series in England …..
Wtf Ponting is bowling?
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