Are you following the polling data? McCain had a small bounce starting just before the last debate that had the republican hopeful projecting the fall of the Obama rocket. But it is looking more and more like something of a dead cat bounce. Here’s some cool info–
McCain has virtually given up (stopped spending ad dollars) on a handful of states now that they thought were givens early on–New Hampshire, Colorado (just yesterday), Wisconsin, Michigan, Maine, Minnesota. The campaign folks will deny it, but look at the $$. The math is beginning to work big time against him. The strategy at the present seems to be to throw everything at Pennsylvania in the hopes of showing some momentum change. But PA is virtually an impossibility for McCain, barring some external event (say Michelle Obama going on a shooting rampage in downtown Philly). For the first time in quite a while it appears that Obama will carry more registered dems than McCain does republicans. In PA that means that McCain needs to win the independents by something like 30%. Right now he is down by a big number in that category and it seems impossible for him to turn that around. So no chance in PA. Virginia is floating more Obama every day. Florida, Missouri and Ohio are close but leaning dem. For McCain to have a chance he has to win virtually everything that is still close to close. Doubtful.
The national numbers are ticking up again into double digit territory and the political junkies are starting to talk about a Reagan-like landslide. In the Reagan-Carter matchup, Reagan was ahead by a few points (5?) until about 3-4 days before the election when all the undecided floated his way and he won in a walk. It appears that Obama was in a similar spot a couple of days ago and the daily polling is showing the swing of the undecideds starting. If you want a daily poll reading between now and the election the best is fivethirtyeight.com — it is pure statistics wonderment!
And in case you miss the reference, 538 is the total number of electoral votes.
