This week has been nothing but net, so to speak, for Barack Obama. Yet the AP is reporting today that McCain's poll numbers in several crucial states are on the rise. And on Tuesday, Obama's chances of winning the election, as calculated by fivethirtyeight, dropped below 60 percent for the first time in a good long while (though it is back to 62 percent now).
How can this be? Not only has Obama had a great week, but McCain has also had a lousy one. He has shown no signs of improving his vastly overstated understanding of foreign policy, and his latest ad—the one that totally seriously tries to blame Obama for high gas prices—reeks of desperation. (Has no one on his staff bothered to explain to him why more drilling wouldn't help prices and why eliminating the federal gas tax is just a terrible idea?)
So why have Americans (I'm looking at you, Ohio) been registering more and more of a preference for the doddering McCain? I can understand that some people are such hard-core Republicans that they'd vote for their nominee even if he were a dead retarded goat fetus, but who, when Q-pac comes a-calling, would say, "You know, I've been undecided before now, but after this week, I think John McCain really speaks to me in a way that Obama never could." Somebody please explain this to me.
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Nate Silver at 538 has some good explanations for this and I'll add a few of my own.
1) McCain made a big early investment in advertising, outspending Obama 3-1 in June. The ads were very negative, and it will obviously have an effect.
2) Regression to the mean. Obama got about a 6-point bump after wrapping up the nomination. Clearly, some people got caught up in the historic moment and were fair-weather supporters of Barack. A month and a half later, things are regressing back to the 60-40% odds Obama-McCain. This was not entirely unexpected, and Nate Silver actually anticipated this.
3) There hasn't been enough time to see a post world-tour bump for Obama. McCain probably had one of his worst weeks of the campaign and Obama had one of his best. It's only getting better and the week is not yet done. I think this should be worth a point or two in the polls.
4) Finally, many of these polls, especially the state polls do not include 3rd party candidates such as Bob Barr and Ralph Nader. Believe it or not, these 3rd party candidates actually help Obama to the tune of +2.4% (this was posted on OpenLeft yesterday).
5) There are many intangibles not measurable by the polls. For instance, what is a good likely voter screen this early out? One has to anticipate that Obama is going to massively bring out non-traditional voters that are not included in current polling screens. People who have never voted before and are not even registered to vote. Secondly, how can we measure the overwhelming ground advantage that Obama has? He has 3-4 times as many volunteers and field offices as McCain. There is absolutely no way of knowing how much this will be worth on election day.
Anyway, just some thoughts on the current state of polling and the race.
Obama is still the slight favorite, but this is not yet a rout.
dude. obama is so the reason for high gas prices.
ask yourself: what color is oil? and what color is-
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