One of the things that absolutely astounds me is the inability [or perhaps unwillingness] of conservative heads to wrap themselves around numbers. It is part and parcel, I think, of their inability to deal with plain, but inconvenient, facts–such as that purely coincidental disappearing arctic ice cap.
So I’ll do the numbers for you. George W, Bush won 50.7% of the popular vote in 2004. Because of the small fry noise candidate Ralph Nader, the margin of victory over John Kerry was 2.4%. The electoral totals were 286 Bush 251 Kerry.
This was supposed to be a landslide and a mandate that splashed red paint all over the entire United States.
As someone else has pointed out, in yesterday’s Gallup rolling 3 day poll, Barack Obama was at 50% and John McCain was at 42%, with 8% undecided–an 8% lead.
Now there are polls and there are polls, but Gallup is one of the most useful because the same questions have been asked every day since the first week in March. So the progress of the race can easily be tracked there.
So what do we find when we do that? Back in late April John McCain reached his peak support of 48% and has staggered down and held to a 43% average since July and a low of 42%. He has also never cleanly broken above 45% during the last two months. Obama was up to 49% in July during his foreign trip. He has also never significantly dropped below 45%. And yesterday he was at 50%
Obama’s low numbers have been exactly the same as John McCain’s high numbers, and Obama’s high numbers are a full 5% higher than that.
Moreover, over the last 21 days Obama has led McCain by at least 1% on 16 of those days. McCain led by 1% on only one day in those same 21 days. Remember, GWB’s popular majority was significantly less than 1%, and the noise candidates have largely disappeared.
Is there independent confirmation of this? Over at Pollster.com you can look at a very good regression trendline of all the polls being taken nationally. Obama has never been behind once on this trendline since April. And his lead during this period has never fallen lower than 2% ahead of McCain, and that only once. Also, they list the raw numbers and out of 125 national polls taken since June 1, McCain has led or tied Obama in only nine of them.
Now lets consider the Electoral College votes. The magic number is 270. Based on all state polls taken, Pollster.com calls Obama 260 strong or leaning and McCain 196 strong or leaning, with 102 toss-up. Without separating strong, leaning, or toss-up but using strictly the state poll percentages FiveThirtyEight.com calls Obama 303, McCain 235.
With a full 184,000 simulated election scenarios Election-Projection.com calls Obama 295 McCain 243, with an 81% probability that Obama will win at least the needed 270. IntradeProjectionMarket which measures people putting money down on the results calls 273 Obama and 227 McCain with 38 toss-up, with a 62% probability of an Obama win. And Electoral-vote.com calls Obama 278, McCain 247, with 13 toss-up.
Returning to Gallup, McCain’s low is 42%, Obama’s is 45%. We may take these figures as the rock solid bottom of their support. This leaves 13% still in play. Obama has penetrated as high as 5% into these undecided ranks and has consistently penetrated 2-3% among them. McCain has not penetrated them at all.
This means very clearly that McCain has no traction whatsoever among undecided voters. None. Now I don’t know about you, but I can hardly see how a running mate with even more extreme views than McCain himself is going to help him get that traction, no matter what her gender.
This is unspinable. McCain/Palin is in deep trouble and they have only 60 days to acquire at least 8% out of 13% undecided voters and to accumulate an absolute minimum of 23 more electoral votes, and probably closer to 27.
I think that’s a significant advantage for Obama. Don’t you?
