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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Is McCain dementing? How can he justify having him and Palin in Iowa this weekend? Every poll shows him getting killed there. The latest one has him behind by 15%.
http://wcfcourier.com/articles/2008/10/25/news/breaking_news/doc4903890740db0457887786.txt
Diogenes – it’s like they’re closing their eyes, being spun around, and then just pointing to a spot on the map and going there. We’ll see them in Cali in a few days.
SNIP: Tedious bickering deleted – The Management.
Either that, or maybe the McCain campaign are worried that if they stay in Pennsylvania much longer they’ll be kicked out?
SNIP: Tedious bickering/offensive language deleted – The Management.
Barack Obama on defence as al-Qa’ida backs John McCain – http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24541397-2703,00.html
Old news, or flew under the radar?
#105 – i thought that was against Wills commenting policy?
Wow, clever acrostic poem!
Apparently Obama’s written a draft inauguration speech, though his campaign denies it.
I think it’s perfectly possible that there’ll be some kind of “narrowing” over the last two weeks – after all, McCain’s campaign (according to some reports) has now become more focussed than before (wouldn’t be hard), and also the economic news is probably becoming slightly less shocking to many Americans (if only by virtue of them getting used to it).
McCain can’t win, though, or even get close (though I do think he’ll win Florida).
Also it’s possible that all the polls are simply not adequately allowing for what will surely be a massive black turnout.
old news
I think Palin running for POTUS one day will depend on her avoiding a mental asylum.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/25/palin-obamas-tax-plans-co_n_137851.html
It appears that Palin is a “mega hit” with republican handlers! – http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1008/14929.html
The talk now is of a landslide.
http://www.theage.com.au/world/us-election-2008/republicans-fear-historic-landslide-defeat-20081026-58zs.html
I love this from the above article.
How close would it be if Obama as a Republican and McCain a Democrat?
Here’s the money quote:
A former White House official who still advises Mr Bush said: “McCain hasn’t won independents, nor has he inspired the base. It’s the worst of all worlds. He is dragging everyone else down with him.”
I wouldn’t mind seeing a weigted average for the national polls- i just read RCP article which says they dont weight for thier average.
I like Will’s aproach of not gooing back too far also.
Not sure about the 375 EV, but would be nice to see.
If we can only get a Palin 2012 campaign it will hit the mid 400’s
Globe poll from Boston.com – http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2008/10/globe_poll_obam.html
Good read!
Old Timey Man is done for
sweet
Rasmussen national tracking poll unchanged at Obama +8
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/election_20082/2008_presidential_election/daily_presidential_tracking_poll
Lots of interesting posts above and some great links, for which, thanks.
On points arising from several posts above:
1. Apparently 93% of the French support Obama. I don’t think they have ever forgiven the US for its denigration of France following its active leadership of the opposition to the war in Iraq. Remember Villepin in the UN? You might also remember the jokes that came out of the US including ones about when did France last win a battle? yuk yuk.
2. The election all up is costed at over $Au8billion.
3. I am reasonably sure that Arnold cannot be pres because he was Austrian by birth so he would have to be scratched. Also, he would have to whatever happens to California in the financial crisis and I have read elsewhere that it is one of the prime subprime spots – the Governator might not look too flash in four or eight years time.
4. While William’s analysis generally looked good to me, and I believe that Obama should, and will, win easily, I wonder whether in individual states, the impact of bad weather and the impact of officials on voter registration may be important enough to ensure that McCain rather than Obama will get up in that state? It continues to amaze me that local and state officials white-ant a democracy with apparent impunity.
5. The other interesting analysis that I have yet to see done is one parallel to that done by Possum on the possible relationship between trends in consumer confidence, polled intentions and actual voting. I suspect that that alone would be worth several per cent for Obama.
6. The IMF’s $2.1 billion will not be able to save Iceland from its financial quagmire. It might stave it off for a little while, which is probably all that the IMF is hoping for at this stage. $100billion is about what the Icelanders need. I suspect that the scale of the global financial crisis is beyond the scope of the IMF. The IMF was OK for bullying one or two small bankrupt states at a time. It was a toy of the main players at their heyday. It is completely unprepared for dealing with a global financial crisis involving the main players themselves.
7. British banks are doing the same with their money as the Stanley Morgan bit quoted above. But the pressure on them is increasing swiftly. I imagine that Obama will change things when he gets his hands on the moolah and when the dems have control of both the house and the senate. Unfortunately, a lot of it will have been sent down the tubes to and by Bush’s mates before Obama can get to it.
8. Even if the Republicans looked likely to win, there would have been extreme tensions between the McCain/Palin camps. The reason was identified in earlier posts on this site. Palin very early on started to act and talk as if she thought that when McCain became POTUS, he would die in the saddle and that she would then yeeha the POTUS possie. This was when he was still breathing. It is revealing that McCain lost his head with Palin and Obama kept his with Clinton. The tensions between a Veep (with overweening ambition and righteous notions) and the POTUS would have become unbearable for either McCain or Obama rather quickly. Even given the virtually untrammelled power of the POTUS to simply ignore his VEEP.
9. I thought the bit that was missing from the newspaper endorsement analysis was whether there was an effect arising from the desire of editors to look ‘right’ by picking winners.
At least one deadbeat is rolling up shop over in the Republican party
…
This is just a rumour invented by the McCain campaign.
If you want to find some hubris, you don’t have to go further than McCain himself, who is guaranteeing a win:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1008/14951.html
I guess he used the word “believe” rather than “know”.
Hope the Dems put Liebermann up the creek without a paddle ….
Georgia now a toss-up state on Pollster.com
http://www.pollster.com/polls/ga/08-ga-pres-ge-mvo.php
Not so funny business in Colorado …
As usual, here’s Jason Linkins hilarious summary of the Sunday U.S. political talk shows:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/26/tv-soundoff-sunday-talkin_n_137893.html
FiveThirtyEight has just run their daily projection. McCain’s win percentage is now 3.3%, the lowest it has ever been:
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/
When DID France last win a battle, at least without foreign assistance? Battles against colonials don’t count. My guess is Solferino (1859), when Napoleon III defeated the Austrians.
Adam,
I suppose one could argue that Verdun was an honourable draw.
The higher than usual African American voter turnout in Georgia so far would make any good pollster hesitant to put it in the McCain column. That state is a real wildcard this year.
evan,
Seems to me, on the basis of electoral mathematics, that any election where one party wins crushingly is likely to throw up a bolter or two (think Dawson in our 2007 Federal election).
In this case you would think the bolter(s) would probably be state(s) with a high black population – so Georgia is as good a guess as any.
Adam,
I would have probably given them the Marne, even though there was some BEF involvement, and the Battle of Kufra in Libya again in 1941 with the LRDG. I would also give them Verdun as a victory, as the Germans were attacking to try and break the stalemate; which they failed to do.
A battle that costs 200,000 casualties and causes your army to mutiny can’t be called a victory. It’s true that the Germans didn’t achieve their objective of bleeding the French army to death, but they came pretty close.
Another poll putting McCain’s lead in Arizona at only 2 points now!
http://zimmermancom.com/
The New York Post got it right when it called the French “Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys”.
Is this just equivalent to the observation that France lost the Franco-Prussian war and the ? Surely France cannot have taken part in many other battles since 1859 that were without ‘foreign assistance’ and not ‘against colonials’ (and of course not even the Battle of France was without foreign assistance).
Saying that the first Marne (or the second for that matter) was not a French victory seems an idiosyncratic reading. The result of the battle saved Paris, and proable destruction of the French Army and total defeat for France. Hence it was a victory.
It’s a bit like saying that Dems only reaching 59 Senate seats in the election is not a victory.
French land forces won several major battles in the closing stages of WWII. Perhaps the best were those won by the French Expeditionary Corps (FEC) in Italy under General Juin. They played a key role in the fourth battle of Cassino in June 1944, outflanking the German lines through the Arrezo mountains, enabling Cassino to fall to the Poles. Normandy landings happened at the same time so it never got much publicity.
Good answers both.
They’ve found out where the Biden questions came from.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/10/26/133722/20/1016/642755
Re 132,
Evan, can you think of ANY good reason why a Georgia voter who voted for Carter in 1976 and/or 1980 should NOT vote for Obama now? That’s not even taking into account all of those who have come of voting age since 1980 in Georgia or have moved there since then
…..
Georgia ought to come on down
A lot of white GA voters who voted for Carter in 76 and 80 voted for him because he was from GA, against the tide of white Southern voters shifting to the Republicans, which has been going on since the 1950s. Also a lot of them were older traditional Southern Dems who are now dead, and many of their descendants have always voted Republican. Carter also carried AL, MS, SC and TX – I don’t think anyone expects Obama to carry any of them.
To the best of anyone’s knowledge, has Carter campaigned for Obama anywhere in Georgia?
Things are looking up in Iran. While I wouldn’t want to wish anyone ill normally, I can make an exception for Ahmadinejad. It looks like the pressure of being an international pariah, sanctions, losing the support of colleagues and the public is catching up with him. Religious zealots are fairly immune to “nervous breakdowns” because their belief systems are not affected by reality but when they do go, they go BIG.
Report: Iranian president has fallen ill
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9424GRG0&show_article=1
Adam,
I’ve always seen Aisne and the Nivelle offensive as leading to the mutinies, both of which were after Verdun. Anyway, as Martin B points out… it’s all semantics anyways.
Further to 147,
From that article,
I’m not sure why people should care what newspapers ‘endorse’ specific candidates.
Juliem
Has Palin caused any anti-republican feeling in Alaska? I know it may be a redneck state, but even rednecks don’t like being made a laughing stock. They must know Palin has proven to be a joke candidate, and they will go down in history as the state who elected that joke as governor.
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