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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Adam, You are a veritable fountain of gerrymander knowledge, in comparison with which I am but a mere bubbler!
The district in your 198 post is not quite as terrible as it looks because the corridor going west from Pomona is a “pass” through a hilly region which my VW Beetle used to find most troublesome during the Punic Wars.
As you say, there’s plenty of “natural” ethnic concentrations in California, especially in the “barrio” areas in East L.A.. (check out Mexican-American Cheech Martin’s hilarious video clip parody of Springsteen’s “Born in the USA”).
I’d thank you for not being patronising but I’ve got more important things to do.
Not all states have gerrymandering. It depends on whether the state legislature in question decides the boundaries itself. For example, the boundaries of Iowa’s 5 congressional districts are decided independently.
The US constitution says that the power is vested in the states but that the federal government can change it (except where Senators are chosen).
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_States_of_America
So who actually does it? A bi-partisan commission where the parties make submissions of what they would like, then the commission decides? Kind of like our system here?
I know some states actually have elected panels to decide electoral boundaries.
One of the propositions in California going to vote on the 4th is to replace the elected system with a system where a panel are randomly selected from the voter pool of Democrats, Republicans and others.
Are they bipartisan panels? Or are they prone to being stacked by the Governor?
New Washington Post poll has Obama up by 8 in Virginia. I can’t link directly to it, it requires a login, but it is on the front page:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
So have we decided yet who does the most gerrymandering – the Repubs or the Dems?
They basically agree to each have their own gerrymandering. Which is why there are so many safe seats.
Yes but Iowa is 99% white so the issue hasn’t arisen. If Iowa was 20% Black, and the commissionm drew boundaries that didn’t create one Black-majority district out of five, Black activists would take the commission to court, the courts would follow the Supreme Court’s precedent, and the Iowa legislature would then be forced to gerrymander a Black district. The Repubs would support this for the opportunist reason that the other four districts would then be all-White.
Here’s an interesting blog post regarding how so many counties vote for either Presidential candidate in a landslide:
Maps here:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/bigsort/archive/2008/10/21/an-election-story-for-those-who-like-to-watch.aspx
Zogby +5 Obama again
Obama 50 (up 1)
McCain 45 (up 1)
http://zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1613
A very cheap shot, which discredits the rest of whatever else they have to say. I don’t recall that Jacquie Kennedy, Lady Bird Johnson or Eleanor Roosevelt were street urchins.
Obama is a leftie
… literallly, not only politically 
…..
[
Obama as we knew him… man and boySchoolfriends remember his love for comic books, basketball and teasing the girls. A former boss recalls him as a young man running a community project in Chicago. A fellow senator remembers being beaten by him at poker. Gifted student, quiet persuader, charismatic speaker, loyal friend… We speak to the people who knew Barack Obama best, revealing an intimate, often touching, portrait of a man on the brink of greatness
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/26/barackobama-uselections2008
Yech
Do they remember how the wild birds and animals would come and eat out of his hands?
“revealing an intimate, often touching, portrait of a man on the brink of greatness”
You’re kidding right?
No ltep, none of us here on PB nor the millions of Americans who are voting for Obama, are kidding and you need to get used to hearing the phrase “POTUS Barack Obama” …….
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=oElJy_eFeLk
After 8 years of Bush it makes me wonder how anybody can think Obama wouldn’t be a step up
A lot of people are heading for very bitter disillusionment if this is the level of hysteria the Obama faithful have reached.
Dario, that’s a very low bar.
Not saying it isn’t, but many still think he’ll go lower… based on what exactly I can’t fathom
Even Sarah Palin would not be too much of a step down from George Bush.
Adam
You will see the truth and it will set you free.
http://lastrow.wordpress.com/2008/10/21/obama-votive-candle/
PS I’ve just found the reason the US dropped the Bomb on the Japanese not the Germans. It wasn’t ready until after Germany has surrendered. Eisenhower pleaded with Truman the US not to use it on Japan. And Kyoto was the favoured target but Stimson said no due to it’s architecture and culture (and Dresden criticism).
After initial reluctance, I have accepted that Obama will make a better president than McCain, who has been a big disappointment. But I’m not going to follow Julie down the yellow brick road to Obamalalaland, in which The One makes the lame to walk and the blind to see, the oceans to rise (or is it fall?) and the lion to lie down with the lamb. He’s a very talented politician, he may or may not be a good president – but he is not the Messiah.
juliem
Almost every recent POTUS has been sinister. Obama (and McCain), Ford, Reagan, Clinton and George H Bush.
Hilary was
Yes, Diogenes, I knew all that, except the bit about Eisenhower, which sound improbable. Eisenhower was commander in Europe and it had nothing to do with him.
Eisenhower made it clear that he had won his war by conventional means and said that the Japanese would surrender very soon using conventional warfare, and that the US should not be the first to use the Bomb. (Ike in Ike)
The Obama votive is San Martin de Porres of Peru. He was a mulatto saint and he is the Saint Protector of the Mixed Race people.
Made it clear to whom? Did Truman ring him up in Paris and ask his opinion? Ike had never set foot in the Pacific theatre – what did he know about it? I bet MacArthur was in favour of using the bomb.
Analysis of how Obama might win Georgia (if he does)
[
The big question is not if African-Americans' share of the electorate will increase, but by how much and what that will do to the share of the electorate made up by whites. The potential electorate could look as follows.
Whites: 64 percent African Americans: 31 percent Hispanics: 5 percent
Let's say McCain gets 71% of the white vote, Obama 26%, and [Third Party candidate] Bob Barr 3%, which is reasonable and perhaps a bit cautious on Obama’s and Barr’s shares. Then there is the Hispanic vote, which favored Bush in 2004 but nearly everyone has now given Obama roughly 2-1. Meanwhile, let’s put Obama’s support among African-Americans at 95%, which I think is reasonable.
The end result — if one assumes the same number of voters that showed up four years ago (3,280,000) come to the polls next week — would be as follows:
Obama would end up with 49.39 percent of the vote (approximately 1,610,000 votes) McCain would end up with 48.64 percent of the vote (approximately 1,590,050 votes)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/24/breaking-down-obamas-pote_n_137601.html
]
You’re very hard to please Adam!
Eisenhower was in Germany at the time when Stimson got word that the nuclear test in NM was successful. He argued with Stimson and rang Truman to dissuade him.
MacArthur wasn’t consulted and apparently said he disagreed with it later.
I found this list of people who disagreed with it;
http://www.doug-long.com/quotes.htm
Come on you have to start feeling sorry for McCain, the average wingnut is blaming him for the failure of their policies
Adam in Canberra
said:
Rudd inherited a low bar form Howard, Obama inherits a low one from Bush, it’s the right wing nutter legacy.
A year ago people on this website said Obama had no hope and would lose. I am about to feel justified- now let me see now who were those people.. cannot wait to reveal who these knowalls are…
Hey, I said McCain was going to win a few weeks ago!
I’ve probably revised my stance a bit since then. But if he does, I reserve the right to say I called it.
Saw the most goddarn awful hour long piece on Obama on Hammity this afternoon. I should have kept flicking through the channels but just couldn’t pass this one.
Hammity had reasons (dotpointed) on why no-one, including him, should be voting for Obama. He dragged up the Rev. Wright thing, some Arab bloke who gave money for his campaign years ago, ‘community organising’ (mad it sound like a dirty word) and lots more. It will be run for the next 9 days.
Some other GOP insider said that a private mob would be running ads for a few days on ‘Joe the Plumber’ and at the end of this McCain’s would be leading in the polls. Also suggested that Rev. Wright thing be rehashed continuously.
Juliem, what on earth breeds this type of Republican attitude in each election. The things I have read about McCain make my insides curdle – he is not white angel but is that ever brought up in the media over there. The Republicans seem to be a little like the Libs here – if anyone is against them they can only denigrate.
I’m for Obama and I’ll have 376 with Florida please.
On Intrade, Obama now has a better chance of winning Missouri, than McCain has of winning Montana.
It’s all they know
238 BH,
Got it down and I’ll add it to my list in the morning (its on the other computer in our house which is tied up at the moment). May I presume that you think Obama will take Missouri? (excepting William who hasn’t gotten back to me if he officially wants in or not in the list {I’ve put him in unofficially}, all other guesses < 350 or so have said yes, Obama takes Missouri. A few under 350 have said yes but virtually all of the yes answers are coming from the large EV guesses. Let me know and I’ll get your answer in the morning.
BH,
Will get back to you on this in the a.m, have to sleep on it LOL …..
…..
AiC you are being a little disingenuous about John McCain’s second marriage. You fail to mention that he left his disabled first wife, Carol, for a woman barely older than his oldest son in 1980.
Subsequently Cindy has proved to be a little bit of lead in his saddlebags given her addictions and theft of medications. Being white, blonde, and well connected she got a plea bargain on that little “incident”.
Would the Repugnants have given Obama, his beautiful wife Michelle and wonderful kids a free pass if the roles had been reversed?
226
[After initial reluctance, I have accepted that Obama will make a better president than McCain, who has been a big disappointment. But I’m not going to follow Julie down the yellow brick road to Obamalalaland, in which The One makes the lame to walk and the blind to see, the oceans to rise (or is it fall?) and the lion to lie down with the lamb. He’s a very talented politician, he may or may not be a good president - but he is not the Messiah].
Adam – none of us see Obama as a Messiah. We simply believe he is the best hope we have for a better world, after eight long years of Bush and his neocons. Surely it is not surprising that we would feel a little excited by that prospect. .
WRONG! If you think Obama is better than McCain it is because you think Obama is THE third coming of Jesus. And it means you don’t like McCain’s Healthy Choice meals.
There is no other logical explanation for it.
I only want an Obama win because if Palin gets in it will be WW3.
They are all politicians. I choose the one least likely to blow us all up.
I have to make a coffession. I hate FOX news (right wing American crap) but I am drawn to watch it intermitedly lately because I am enjoying watching them squirm as an Obama landslide prevails. They have a never say die, in your face attitude for right wing causes but I’m loving it still. The last remnant of a stool that refuses to flush!
Check out the Fox News take on a speech McCain made the day Obama won the nomination:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aMDJP4VxY4
They do their best to say McCain sucked only a little bit. When I look at this video it just reminds me how badly McCain’s campaign has been run from start to finish.
Because RCP dont use a weighted average I thought I’d have a tinkle
Using the national polls from Fox News (10/20 – 10/21) to Rueters (10/24 – 10/26)
I have Obama at 50.7 on weighted average which is .2 above RCP average
Anyone want a crack at it? I could be wrong
http://election.princeton.edu/ and http://www.electoral-vote.com/ both think the Democrats are going to get 59 senators (including Sanders and Lieberman).
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