The Presidential Race
By Mitch Berg
If someone held a gun to my head and said “pick the Presidential Race” right now, I’d say Obama by a point or so.
I also think that the factors are there for an upset – perhaps a one in three chance. The factors are…:
- Huge numbers of undecideds: Over the weekend, the AP said around 14% of voters hadn’t made up their minds about the race as of last weekend. That’s phenomenally high – and as Ed and I noted during the show on Saturday, I don’t think most of them are going to take a flyer and vote for the least-experienced Presidential candidate in US history.
- Obama always overpolls: Remember – Obama won the caucus states by a huge margin, indicating his popularity among activists. Hillary Clinton won most of the primary states – the states that decide their endorsements by popular votes.
- Mac underpolls: He always has.
- Americans underpoll, too: As Ed noted on the show, pollsters are reporting hang-up rates around 80%. Since Democrats are vastly more likely to be the ones sitting in their armchairs on a Friday night praying to Marx that a pollster calls them so they can add their opinional grease to the Obama skidway, I think it not at all outrageous to think that Democrats are overrepresented; the crosstabs on a disturbing number of polls show oversampling of Democrats.
- Pauline Kael Syndrome: Obama has saturation media coverage, of course – and the media, nationally and regionally, is centered in the hotbeds of Obamania; state capitols, university towns and so on.
Regionally, one more bit of good news for Republicans; election day is supposed to be cool and rainy. Historically, Minnesota Democrats are more likely to stay home for inclement weather; Republicans will drag themselves through blizzards over paths strewn with razor blades in weather that’ll make Dems stay home and watch Just Shoot Me reruns.
So we shall see.
November 3rd, 2008 at 6:49 pm
My prediction is also that Obama could win, but McCain still has a shot.
I feel the same about the Senate and house candidates.
The right-wing message is really catching on, huh? So much so that you’re counting on bad weather to save the day?
November 3rd, 2008 at 11:29 pm
Regionally, one more bit of good news for Republicans; election day is supposed to be cool and rainy. Historically, Minnesota Democrats are more likely to stay home for inclement weather; Republicans will drag themselves through blizzards over paths strewn with razor blades
Wait, so global warming theoretically helps democrats, while a global cool down would help the Republicans? OHHHH the irony!
I was also thinking about the over polling today. ACORN alone is known to have filed tens of thousands of false registrations. There are very likely tens of thousands more not known & there are other groups doing this.
The pollsters claim they based their sample size & ratio on the recent upswing of newly registered voters. This being the case, the tens of thousands of false registrations likely had an effect on that reasoning. Assuming that these dead people don’t vote, everyone only votes once, the Dallas Cowboys don’t vote in Ohio, & the bums only vote in the precinct that their registered bench is located in, then the oversampling of democrats over republicans is based on a false premise.
The key is, do the high poll numbers for Obama dissuade Republicans from going out to vote for McCain? Hopefully not.
My gut tells me that this will be much closer than anyone thinks, & may even be a slight McCain victory… but I honestly think anything can happen tomorrow.
For any Lefties out there, you don’t have to vote, your guy has it in the bag, don’t worry! stay at home, relax & enjoy your PS3!