Dead heat

[Dozen]

Swerb called this last week but I am a little surprised it's this close right now.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080908/pl_ ... cs_poll_dc

these next 8 weeks are gonna be dirty!

[Mr. MacPhisto]

McCain is up by 10 amongst likely voters in the USA Today/Gallup.

This is also the first time I can remember McCain being up in the Real Clear Politics poll average.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls ... a-225.html

[swerb]

Damn. Now that's what you call a bounce. USA Today Gallup from Obama +7% to McCain +10% in one week.

[skatingtripods]

The Rasmussen polls help tell the story about the battleground states. Of note, Palin has a 43% very favorable rating in Ohio. Just the push that McCain needed.

Over 40% also said that they would not feel comfortable at all if Obama were President, with 20something% saying that about McCain in the Ohio polls.

[Mr. MacPhisto]

I heard that Obama's lead in California, Oregon, and Washington has seen a huge drop over the past week and that those states may be in play.

Polls suggest Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey already are in play.

McCain appears to be pulling away in the states Bush won in 2004 and now Kerry's wins appear to be threatened. Notice Obama in Michigan and Pennsylvania recently. I think they're worried about those states.

It's no cakewalk for McCain, but if he can work to threaten in those state then Obama and the Democrats will be on the defensive in trying to lose ground. What good is it to gain Ohio if you lose Pennsylvania and Michigan?

I think McCain ends up pulling out all of the Midwest except Illinois because of the Palin appeal, the message of believable change, and the concern over what direction Obama would actually take us in. I think most people in the Midwest are very leery of Chicago politicians.

We're seeing a big pull away down here in Florida. Obama might take Miami, but he's struggling in Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach County. The state has been swinging for McCain and the internal polling I've seen suggests that McCain is running stronger than Bush did in 2004 with a 5% margin of victory. Obama has pulled a lot of advertising in the state. He did send Hillary out here, but his campaign seems pretty half hearted about Florida. It's not a good idea to give up 27 electoral votes unless you don't think you can keep them.

There are still reports out there that Obama is running out of money. He had a bang up July but has sent out tons of fund raising letters urging support. Could it be that his well has gone pretty dry, that he's already tapped out much of his supporters. Granted, it's what we're hearing from our the state Republican committee, but the talk is that Obama is having cash flow problems and that his cushion is shrinking every day. The DNC is in the same boat apparently.

I have yet to see any data on Obama's August fund raising despite McCain already stating his take was $46 million for the month. Was it buried and hidden so that the public wouldn't know for sure that serious problems are brewing?

If he is short on cash and he is being challenged in several states that Kerry won last time then things don't look very good for him. He's on the defensive right now and I've even heard friends supporting Obama say that he sounds like he's whining now. I personally don't think the Dems work well on defense, especially when given no warning. The Palin pick hit them hard and they still seem to be reeling from it. The GOP voters are suddenly charged up. We've had a couple of thousand new volunteers contact the Pinellas and Hillsborough County Republican Party to volunteer for the next eight weeks in voter turnout projects, phone banks, etc. We now have more than twice as many people compared to our highest volunteer totals in the past thirty years. Reagan vets have told me that they didn't even see this many volunteers back then.

I don't know if the rest of the nation mirrors us but if it does then the Republicans are going to get mobilized and motivated. The GOP brand seems to have been revived behind the reform message of McCain and Palin - and I think more and more GOP candidates are going to pick up that theme and go with it.

Should be a fun eight weeks. I'm hoping it ends like I'm beginning to think it will.

[Mr. MacPhisto]

NY Times article on Obama's fund raising.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/09/us/po ... ref=slogin

If they raised only $17M in August then that's more than a drop off from July, it is a plummet off a cliff. July the Obama camp took in $50M or so in donations.

We've been hearing about nasty Obama fundraisers down here making threats to people that they don't think have paid their dues. Change we can believe in.

It'll be interesting to see if the donors pony up or if they too are realizing the problems with Obama. I'm sure that many were not thrilled with the Biden pick and they may be demoralized just seeing the Republicans energized now.

I'm interested to see the reporting and how their cash flow is. As I've said elsewhere, some credible sources indicate that they're spending more than they're taking in. I had heard that their $13M cash cushion was down to near $6M and that they might have to borrow money by the end of September - except Obama doesn't have the assets to get the appropriate loans.

The DNC is also struggling right now because most of the money has been going to Obama and not to them while the RNC has done much better than expected and is doing even better right now. McCain and the RNC have about $300M between them right now from my understanding. I'm not too solid on the campaign financing law, but I believe McCain can use the cash raised for the national election and is just unable to raise any more.

McCain's campaign has been able to structure a good budget because they've known what their financial shape would be. It's my understanding that they are now in better shape than they anticipated. If Obama was counting on the cash to never stop and never reigned in the spending on his campaign then he may have a problem there.

[CP]

If Obama was counting on the cash to never stop and never reigned in the spending on his campaign then he may have a problem there.

Replace "campaign" with "budget" and you have foreshadowing of what will happen if Obama is elected...

[jfiling]

If Obama was counting on the cash to never stop and never reigned in the spending on his campaign then he may have a problem there.

Replace "campaign" with "budget" and you have foreshadowing of what will happen if Obama is elected...

I agree, and that's some damn fine snark there. It would have worked even better had Hillary gotten the nomination.

[gotribe31]

I work for the federal govt in a national security position. I'm not big into politics or political parties, but I do consider myself a conservative idealogically (full disclosure). I cannot underestimate what a disaster for this country I beleive it would be if Barack Obama were elected.

Is this my opinion? Yeah, I guess so. But knowing some of the things I know, I consider it to be a very informed opinion. I'm not in love with McCain...far from it. But Obama would be a trainwreck far worse than even the Browns pass rush against Dallas, and thats saying something.

Just my two cents....

[Ziner]

I am going to call my shot right now... you can save it if you would like... McCain just won. Did anyone see Obama actually say "You know, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig." Refering to Palin. I dont care in what context that is one of the worst gaffes I have seen. After her joke about lipstick I wouldnt be suprised if he actually meant it as a jab to her. This is just one of the few gaffe's in the last few days. But I am ready to call the race. He is a train off his rails. Palin screwed Obama's camp and the DNC up so much they wont recover. They are sliding in the polls, running out of cash, and saying dumb thing after dumb thing. Its over. Heres the link

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch ... -mc-1.html

[Mr. MacPhisto]

I am going to call my shot right now... you can save it if you would like... McCain just won. Did anyone see Obama actually say "You know, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig." Refering to Palin. I dont care in what context that is one of the worst gaffes I have seen. After her joke about lipstick I wouldnt be suprised if he actually meant it as a jab to her. This is just one of the few gaffe's in the last few days. But I am ready to call the race. He is a train off his rails. Palin screwed Obama's camp and the DNC up so much they wont recover. They are sliding in the polls, running out of cash, and saying dumb thing after dumb thing. Its over. Heres the link

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch ... -mc-1.html

You said in another thread that it was a rope-a-dope. An analyst said that when Palin was announced.

Obama has been on defense since that Friday. McCain took the night off from national exposure on Obama's big night and put out that nice congratulatory ad. He let him know that they'd get back to it the next day.

That's when McCain landed a fierce uppercut that Obama didn't see coming. He stole his thunder and caused Obama's speech to be buried. While Palin and McCain's speeches got tons of airplay last weekend, Obama's acceptance speech was hardly heard.

The Obama camp's initial small town reaction hurt him and Palin's attack dog speech made her the most popular candidate in this race. I think McCain likes the spotlight off of himself and Palin seems quite willing to take the shots.

My guess is that the Obama campaign got their surrogates to go after Palin and smear her but it backfired horribly. David Axelrod, a chief Obama advisor, has already been caught as a party to this. Obama said he'd fire anyone in his campaign that was involved with the smear yet Axelrod is still there. I think he's marching on Obama's orders.

I'm actually starting to think that Obama did intend to smear Palin and use it as a comedic point with his followers. They let out a few guffaws and he just let them continue with them. He knew what he was insinuating.

And then the lame comeback essentially saying McCain said the same thing was ridiculous. This is going to hurt him, especially since he has refused to apologize. He may have to eventually but the damage is done.

On top of that you've got Joe Biden telling parents with special needs children that they have to support embryonic stem cell research. Nice of you to let them make their own decisions, Joe.

Barring a major gaffe by McCain and Palin, I think Obama is in deep trouble and that it will only get worse. He's flailing. His campaign isn't getting the money they need based on their expenditures. He's now flopped on the 527s and will use them because it is politically expedient when he slammed them before. Just like he promised he go with public financing.

We've found out what he campaign means when they talk about change. It's the changes in position that Obama makes every five minutes. He told ABC that he wouldn't hike up the tax rate now because of the recession, another change in his plan. The guy is one of the worst rookies that I've ever seen.

[Mr. MacPhisto]

Former Democratic House member Mike Gravel on Sarah Palin when on liberal talk radio. He praises her.

http://hotair.com/archives/2008/09/09/c ... ke-gravel/

Worth a listen.

[stretch51]

Interesting though - I'm not getting a good read on Votes vs. Electoral College votes. I've seen a variety of different +/- 3 points where it's a virtual dead heat. As of today, the three electoral college sites I checked were wacky. Some states that were "strong" Obama are huge questions in other polls.

I wonder if liberal media is trying really hard to keep it looking like Obama's in the lead on some of these swing states to confuse the everyday people, when in reality, it's keeping the Dems in the dark. (like 2004 when Kerry was supposed to be winning +10 in many states)

[Mr. MacPhisto]

Interesting though - I'm not getting a good read on Votes vs. Electoral College votes. I've seen a variety of different +/- 3 points where it's a virtual dead heat. As of today, the three electoral college sites I checked were wacky. Some states that were "strong" Obama are huge questions in other polls.

I wonder if liberal media is trying really hard to keep it looking like Obama's in the lead on some of these swing states to confuse the everyday people, when in reality, it's keeping the Dems in the dark. (like 2004 when Kerry was supposed to be winning +10 in many states)

The polling right now if iffy for the most part because they aren't usually including turnout models.

Even so, most of the polls that are taken do have larger samples of Democrats because of past elections and polling. The Democrats are not broken down ideologically though, so the polls can be difficult to read into. There are a lot of Democrats that are more conservative as opposed to liberal Democrats. The big problem pollsters have is in identifying them and breaking down the party along those lines. Republicans are not monolithic, but they are more uniform the the Democrat Party is.

A major flaw in most of the polls you see is that they often neglect the rural votes - or at least don't take them into much account. Much of the polling is focused on the larger cities in a state because of the ease of access. For instance, the polling data out there on Florida largely neglects the panhandle outside of Tallahassee and Pensacola. Both of those areas tend to skew to the left whereas the rest of the panhandle skews right.

Ohio data doesn't take places like Lima, Findlay, Marietta, or even Canton into account - at least not in a way that tries to distribute the population properly. Most of the polling is concentrated on the major metropolitan areas.

State polls also do tend to trail national polls by around two weeks. The current state polling is probably really tracking the end of the Democratic National Convention. Next week will we see more of an impact on Palin and the RNC in the individual state polling.