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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Yeah, I don’t pay any attention to the US media at the best of times so why should I pay attention to them when it comes to voting?
I wonder how many papers just endorse whoever is leading the polls so they make themselves look good.
“The New York Times – We picked the last 10 Presidents!”
Socrates, another way to look at it would be that the people might act more protectively of Palin in the face of the jeering and shunning she’s received from the liberal ‘elite’ media.
Another way to look at it would be to notice Bush was a laughing stock but managed to be re-elected in 2004.
The French have a glorious military history, and I’d just note that anyone peddling the “cheese-eating surrender monkey” garbage is – inadvertantly or not – just a BUSH STOOGE peddling crap straight from Republican HQ circa 2003. And why the slur? Because they rightly wouldnt endorse the Iraq war. Who looks like the idiots now? Answer: those who did endorse Bush. Vive la France!
Oh yeah, and the major episode of French “surrender” cited is 1940 – when everyone fled from the Wehrmacht. Including , thats right: the British (Dunkirk, anyone?). And the Russians, who were curling up into a small ideologically perverse ball to avoid the Wehrmacht in 1940.
Here, if yuou dont know anything about French military history, read this.
The War nerd will sort you out. http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=7061&IBLOCK_ID=35&PAGE=1
Traditionally it matters more in the US than it does here – they have more newspapers, they have a greater tradition of independence, there are more independent voters to be influenced. The role of newspapers has of course declined greatly in recent decades, but in many smallish states what the major newspaper says is of some importance. The Manchester Union-Leader used to be the most important newspaper in the country because of its dominance in NH, which held the first primary. The Des Moines Register’s opinion is important in the Iowa caucuses. Most of the big-city papers – the NYT, the WSJ, the WaPo, the Boston Globe – are known partisans so their opinion counts for less. But the Chicago Tribune, a traditional Republican paper, endorsing Obama was a news event in itself.
I don’t know, Socrates, I can only speculate. Based upon the words of the endorsement, I would think that enough Alaskans out there ARE embarrassed by it so that the newspaper decided to make a stand and endorse Obama. Newspapers usually “sniff” the wind before endorsing especially when they are endorsing against the flow so to speak.
The bottom line, imho, is the last quoted line above where they clearly mention “yes, she is our lady” BUT “that isn’t enough” …….
SNIP: Strong swearing not permitted, with or without asterisks. See Article II of comment moderation guidelines.
France does indeed have a glorious military history, but the fact is that the last four really big wars the French were in, they either lost or only won because they were rescued by the US. Louis XIV tried to take over most of the world, but was forced to accept overall defeat at Utrecht in 1713. Napoleon tried to conquer Europe, and won many battles, but was decisively defeated at Leipzig in 1813 and again at Waterloo. France was part of the winning sides in WWI and WW2, but in both they would have been defeated without the decisive intervention of the US. Since 1945 they have fought losing colonial wars in Indo-China and Algeria, and were humiliated along with the UK at Suez. So it’s a record that gets less glorious as it goes along, n’est ce pas? On the other hand, they have a much more honourable record of military conduct (except in Algeria) than Germany, Russia, Japan, Italy or even the US.
3 red states [ Virginia, North Carolina, West Virginia] now purple
{tell me something I didn’t already know 
}
Haven’t you read Asterisk? The Gauls put up a great fight against the Romans.
lefty e
I hope my “cheese-eating surrender monkey” comment wasn’t taken seriously. I was mocking the US right-wing press.
Obama is a touch under 88% at Intrade to go along with his record high of 96.7% at Fivethirtyeight.com.
Julie @ 158
I am amazed to read such a “fair and balanced” report from The Mooneyton Times.
Well, you’ve shifted the goalposts from “battles” to “wars”. In any case, if France was going to be defeated in WWI and WWI except for the US, then one must say the same about the British, in which case the 20th century military record of Britain is not much better than that of France.
The counterpoint to the US rescuing France is, as pointed out in lefty’s link, is that the Americans would have been defeated in the War of Independence if they weren’t ‘rescued’ by the French.
Oz @ 159
The Romans ultimately defeated the Gauls, and the Gauls went on to adopt Roman culture. (There were even some emperors of Gallic descent.) But the Romans never conquered the Franks, who helped drive the Romans out of Gaul and contributed to the fall of the Roman empire in western Europe.
And now I’ll return to regular programming…
If Indiana is a toss-up going into the election, then Ohio is already lost, and McCain is doomed. Though I suspect he’s gone already. Maybe there is a God after all…
jj @ 162,
when the rivals of the left wing rag are publishing stories like this, you know that the Republicans are in trouble
….
Bush has tanked the prospects of any Republican for POTUS for at least 8 years and likely a generation
He was a lot more popular then than he is now. If he could run for a third term he would have no chance.
Precisely, Martin. The comment stands equally well for the British in the 20th century.
Moreover, I’d add that I can think of another major military power with a proud record that has “fought losing colonial wars in Indo-China and [the middle east]“!
Try the US.
In sum, the more you examine this slur against the French, the less water it tends to hold. Its just a variation on a theme with a long history, before the entente cordiale, which is anti-French sentiment in the Anglo world. Made sense, I guess: the were a major global competitor before 1905. Bit dated now!
We all remember Henry V and Agincourt, ‘once more unto the breach ‘ yada yada – but I suspect most high school students of Shakespeare never learn that France actually won that war against England.
Martin B, correct on both counts.
Bush was only very narrowly re-elected in 2004, and he would have been defeated if 9/11 hadn’t happened, even by a turkey like Kerry. The “rally round the flag” sentiment last just long enough to get him over the line, aided by a bit of electoral fiddling in Ohio.
Which is why Picardy and Aquitaine are still part of the British Empire….. oh.
aided by a bit of electoral fiddling in Ohio
You have to love Republican gerrymandering and electoral corruption
It’s widely believed that Kennedy only won in 1960 because Mayor Daley rigged the vote in Chicago so that Kennedy carried Illinois.
The worst gerrymandering in the US is that which is used to create districts for Black Democrats in the South, viz:
http://nationalatlas.gov/printable/images/preview/congdist/FL03_109.gif
This is a corker too
http://nationalatlas.gov/printable/images/preview/congdist/IL04_109.gif
And this
http://nationalatlas.gov/printable/images/preview/congdist/nc12_109.gif
Now in fact the Repubs supported the creation of these rotten borough districts, because they pen all the Black voters in one district and thus make the surrounding districts much whiter and easier for them to win. But the initiative for creating them came from court challenges by Black Democrats, which the Dem party as a whole doesn’t dare oppose, even though this gerrymandering is deeply corrupt and disadvantages the party as whole.
I just found this Adam:
first of all, the electoral votes of Illinois would not, by themselves, be
enough to deprive JFK of an Electoral College majority. Second, it is far
from clear that JFK was “counted out” in Cook County–the local Democrats
that year were much more concerned with defeating the Republican States’
Attorney, Adamowski, than with who would be elected president of the United
States. (If you find that hard to believe, you don’t know much about
Chicago politics!) Third, even if the Democrats did steal enough votes in
Cook County to account for JFK’s 8,000 plus plurality in Illinois, this
would not prove Nixon really carried the state, because there also was
probably Republican vote-stealing in downstate Illinois. For a thorough
review of the JFK-stole-the-1960-election-in-Cook-County myth, see Edmund
F. Kallina, Jr., _Courthouse over White House: Chicago and the
Presidential Election of 1960 (University of Central Florida Press 1988).
MHW @ 176,
From an American who lived there for 43 years, thanks very much for beating me to the punch and setting the facts straight for people who didn’t know them
…..
The only part of that which is clearly true is that Illinois would not have given Nixon the election. I think Richard Daley did indeed care very much that Kennedy, a fellow Irish Catholic, got elected President. The Daley machine was notorious for vote-rigging (as it still is, though less blatantly these days), and I don’t believe he would have refrained from doing it if it would help JFK.
Don’t forget that LBJ rigged the vote in Texas too!
Adam 174
ROTFL – I love that Illonois district 4 map with the gap in between the two halves! I’d give it the Sir Joh award for creative boundary drawing.
No, there isn’t a gap, it’s linked by a road. Districts must be at least technically contiguous. There’s several others that do that.
http://nationalatlas.gov/printable/images/preview/congdist/az02_109.gif
This one was designed to put all the Native Americans in one district.
Miami has been filleted into Cuban, Black and Jewish districts. The gerrymandering is so complex that no-one really knows what district they are in.
http://nationalatlas.gov/printable/images/preview/congdist/fl20_109.gif
Thanks Adam. So much for the melting pot theories.
Ah LBJ – Harold Holt’s favourite POTUS
Of course Holt was dead in the water even if he had never gone to Portsea:
The knives were already out for poor old Holt. The other referendum proposal in 1967 (an end to the House-Senate nexus) was clobbered; Whitlam had clear ascendancy over him in Parliament; the Voyager inquiry just dragged on and on; and he had a whole pack of hugely ambitious and highly disloyal ministers, with McMahon leading but Hasluck close behind, and with McEwen despising everyone. Mungo MacCallum thinks the first attempt on the leadership would have been in 1968, and would have failed; The Tet Offensive, a bit of a non-event in our own history (due to Gorton’s honeymoon), could have seriously crippled Holt’s standing (since he was, of all the Liberal leaders, the one tied most securely to Vietnam). If Hasluck had stayed in Parliament, he would have been the natural successor, since *no one* liked McMahon.
There are two options from there: one, the destabilisation continues until 1969, when we finally get the much-speculated and heralded Whitlam ‘69 victory (the most thought-about ‘if only’ in Australian history), or Hasluck, a far more formidable figure than Holt, Gorton and McMahon put together, seizes the reins and keeps the Liberal Party firmly in control, forestalling Whitlam’s rise to power indefinitely, leading to, perhaps, a progressive, socially liberal, reformist 1970s under the Liberal Party, with Don Chipp as the natural leader of Australia’s youthful social reformers…
http://www.politico.com/gameday/
Obama hits 88 on Intrade for the first time.
Regarding Adam’s thesis on the swing to the centre discussed in Rocking all Round the World thread a few days back, here is an interesting piece from Krugman in NYT.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/26/opinion/26krugman.html?_r=1&em&oref=slogin
The argument is not that recent events see a swing to the left or right, but to more serious candidates; hence a maverick and a hockey mom don’t cut it for POTUS. This isn’t a bad theory that fits a few places: Rudd, Gordon Brown and Sarkozy are all serious to the point of being boring, and have all benefitted from this shift, even thought they sit in the centre, left and right respectively.
Turnbull is relatively serious on any objective viewpoint. Well, more serious than any other offering they could put up for sure.
Since people are interested in exotic Americana such as its gerrymandering, my congressional district (CA-41) is roughly the size of South Australia, but the far western end stabs into the wealthiest suburbs of its richest town in a municipal area about the size of Newcastle.
This electorate was created this shape and size in order to provide an ultra-conservative Republican the pleasure of representing for 40 years one of the safest seats in the state. The reason the seat is so safe is that its rural area is filled with voters who would love nothing better to be represented by Pauline Hanson, if they couldn’t get Sarah Palin. For the record, there is no nearby gerrymandered seat for blacks or anyone else to compensate. This Rep. only needs leave his wealthy suburb in the richest town once every two years to meet his country cousins—-nice work if you can get it gerrymandered.
He is currently under a cloud for alleged corrupt activities akin to a convicted-for-bribery Repub. House pal from San Diego two years ago.
“Serious” candidate is a very wishy-washy description.
For example, in NZ, you could argue that no matter who wins, Clarke or Key, the winner was the “serious” candidate.
jjulian
Forgive my being a pedant but in land area South Australia is roughly 2.5 times larger than the whole of California. I take it you are referring to population (about 1.4 million for SA)?
The story about the incumbent sounds all too familair though.
ltep
The theory fits Turnbull too – peopela re taking him moreseriously than Nelson, and his approval rating is much higher as well.
Oz
A non-serious candidate is like what that judge said about pornography – I have trouble defining it, but I know when I see it. The point is not that one side is more serious, but if such a factor is lacking, then the Dubbya style candidate will suffer.
Its the vibe of the thing
Jesus, how many Congressman/woman are actually currently under allegations of corruption? That’s like the 6th I’ve heard of today.
What America needs in proportional representation with all but the smaller states divided into seats of a few members each as well as a 220 or so extra congresspeople so the electorates are not too big. All of which is perfectly constitutional.
Fat chance getting each state to agree to that.
I could all be done (for the House of Reps) with federal legislation.
At the moment it is law that all states must be divided into single member electorates (a 1967 civil rights measure to prevent state-wide block voting which would have meant no ethnic minority districts).
Well if they can’t even legislate to create a national independent electoral commission something tells me legislating to bring in proportional representation is well beyond their capacity.
Socrates @ 191
No wuckers, mate! Thanks for the help because we’re a reality-based community in here. Yes, it is the population which is comparable, and it is also similar to So. Oz. in that you’ve got large farming, mining and desert areas with only one major urban area.
However, I hasten to add that the way federal electorates are drawn in my NSW region is woeful. We’ve got four very safe seats (2 each way), when it would be just as easy to make them four genuinely contestable seats.
Tom the first and best. I like your idea heaps.
jjulian, gerrymandering at the Congressional level isn’t needed much in CA because the Black and Hispanic communities are so big, and in LA they tend to live in large and concentrated blocks, so it’s fairly easy to create Black-majority and Hispanic-majority districts without grotesque gerrymandering of the kind seen in the South, in NYC and in Chicago.
Still, there is this
http://nationalatlas.gov/printable/images/preview/congdist/ca38_109.gif
ltep,
This was mentioned earlier on either in this specific thread or an older version thereof. It would have to be a constitutional ammendment to make responsibility for voting a federal thing for this to happen. As the constitution was written in the 1700’s voting was not specifically mentioned so those responsibilities default to the states (somewhere in either the 8th, 9th or 10th Constitutional ammendments). It simply isn’t LEGAL to be able to legislate this federally at present. Rather than give you a US civics lecture, I’ve more important things to do, if you want further details, look it up on Wikipedia.
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