Per this article originally linked by askeptic in this thread, there is a rumor that McCain may try to do a 180 on his campaign message in the twilight days before the election.
My question is:
Could this win back the independents and moderate republicans who have become disgusted with McCain’s campaign tactics? Is it going to be viewed as just another in the long line of desperate attempts to grab attention? Will it come off as desperate?
I think you’re overstating McCain’s desperation. Almost all of you are, in fact. Zogby shows McCain ahead by 2 points. The “average” of like 20 different polls shows McCain barely behind Obama. Where in the world did the sudden “McCain is definitely forked” mentality come from?
It’s hard to say. On the one hand, McCain’s desperation seems to be part of the official narrative now. On the other, the media love anything that lets them sell this as a close race, and a campaign reboot might be just the thing. Mostly I expect it’s going to come down to where you get your news from.
Desperate and erratic. Will it help? Perhaps, to a small extent, not, however, enough to win.
McCain’s campaign has released parts of today’s speech-to-come.
It looks like more of the same to me. McCain bitching about how much Obama sucks and offering vague “I know the answer!” solutions. In parts of it, McCain’s remarks about Obama just sound petulant.
This past weekend’s ABC news poll says that people overwhelmingly think McCain’s been running a negative campaign and that Obama’s has been issue based. I don’t see this speech changing that direction.
That’s a Zogby Interactive internet poll.
The traditional Zogby poll has Obama ahead by 4.
That poll is a. almost three weeks old and b. crap. Zogby’s interactive polls never agree with anyone else, because they’re not actually reliable polls. A self-selecting audience is not going to give a good result. By the way, where are the polls you’re finding that show McCain barely behind? From what I’ve seen, Obama has a good lead in the Electoral College.
Well if you’re going to use polling data that’s 3 weeks old, you’re going to have an outdated perception of the race. It’s not really sudden, unless you’re still linking to polls released 9/25. Real Clear Politics’ average is 6.8% lead for Obama, which he’s had for quite a while. Electoral-vote.com shows the race at 346 to 181 in Obama’s favor. Fivethirtyeight has it at 351 to 187 for Obama with their model showing a 93.8% chance of Obama winning. McCain is fighting to win traditionally republican strongholds like North Carolina and Virginia. Even North Dakota is within Obama’s grasp, a state that Bush won in 2004 by 27 points. (http://www.grandforksherald.com/ap/index.cfm?page=view&id=D93PHQN80)
Polls and straightforward polls of polls are slightly misleading due to the structure of the electoral college. FiveThirtyEight and Electoral-vote.com, the two sites that I trust to do better modeling, are both predicting roughly 350 EVs for Obama.
For what it’s worth, RealClearPolitics agrees with that number in their no toss up states electoral map (although I don’t know how they allocate the EVs of toss up states). Intrade has roughly the same number, but I don’t know how seriously I take their predictions.
In fact, Mosier’s same cite shows Obama significantly ahead in every one of the Electoral College predictions.
Only if it includes one of those memory-flashy thingees from the Men In Black movies…
In a way, the media is its own memory-flashy thingee.
Aside from it being an interactive, that poll in your link is from three weeks ago!
If it makes you feel even better, Rasmussen has McCain and Obama tied.
Those polls are weeks old… click on “Latest Polls per State”
(edit: sorry for the duplicate info… didn’t read the thread first)
Wait a sec, the electoral college is a good thing, now? I thought Democrats were calling for it be destroyed back in 2000.
Too late for me, I’ve already voted for Obama, and I’ve voted Republican all the time before this. Not that I don’t think McCain is going to win Indiana, but it’ll be a squeeker.
With the increase in early voting, is an October Surprise or ‘reboot’ too late in the season to matter? I’ll be interested in how many people voted before Nov. 4th when this is all over.
Who’s saying it’s a good thing? It’s what will decide the election, so it’s the thing to watch.
Where are you getting that from?
There are enough states that don’t have early voting that a late game-changing event can matter.
Who said it’s a good thing? We’re just saying that it is a thing. Based on the rules by which we run our elections, McCain is overwhelmingly unlikely to win the election. If we used different rules, he might be slightly more likely to win (10% instead of 6%), but we don’t use different rules, so McCain is in fact desparate.