I don’t know if this is a debate properly speaking, I’m just really not up on this kind of thing and am curious to see what people think. I suspect it might be a debate, and it’s about politics, so I brought it to GD.
The question is, is there any chance this election will not turn out to be practically a tie like the last few have been?
-FrL-
Ask again in four months.
Oh, there is definitely a chance. Obama could blow the election out…or be blown out.
It’s simply to early to tell how things will go. my predictiin atm is that it will be closer than people think.
-XT
The election is going to be much closer than may on this board would have you believe.
may is often right, though.
I really think Obama is going to blow McCain away. The reason is simple: People are enthusiastic about Obama qua Obama; in fact, millions are crazy about him. I know I am, and it’s for the most fundamental and real reasons: the man is smart, eloquent, humble, politically talented (huge understatement), possessing good judgment, and genuinely seems to want a better country and a better world. Virtually no one was enthusiastic about Kerry in that way, so it really is no comparison.
Rather, this time around no one is enthusiastic about McCain qua McCain. People will vote for him because they’re Republican, because they’re Conservative, because they’re racist, because they just don’t like Obama, or any number of similar reasons; but no one likes McCain.
It’ll be a blowout. Obama is going to swab the deck with McCain.
Landslide for Obama.
Remember Reagan/Mondale? Like that.
Maybe not quite that big a landslide.
In my short life, I’ve seen the Democrats snatch defeat from the jaws of victory a few times. I don’t see any reason that it should be close. The economy blows, we’ve got an unpopular war, nobody has a job, life is just prety much shittier unless you’re wealthy, then you’re wealthy no matter who’s in office. Of course, it won’t run like that. a 60/40 split should be the realistic upper threshhold.
Barring a serious scandal, a terrorist attack, or assassination, I think Obama will win by a 2-3% electoral vote margin. It feels like he could win by a landslide right now, but the Republicans have 4 months to chip away at his image, and I expect things to turn really nasty toward the end.
Right now, it’s a complete unknown. The liberals clearly love Obama, and the rest of the country likes him but knows very little about his actual policies.
His actual policies are far to the left of where the American public typically is, so to win one of three thiings has to happen:
He has to use his charisma, intelligence, and speaking ability to convince the public to take a sharp turn to the left.
He has to use his charisma, intelligence, and speaking ability to convince the public that he isn’t moving them to the left
John McCain has to self-destruct.
If he can achieve any of those three, he’ll win. if the Republicans can convince the country that Obama is a closet radical with a left-wing agenda, public opinion could turn against him pretty quickly. We’ll have to see.
It will be close, there will be “irregularities” in numerous closely contested districts, media outlets will not be able to agree on who won the popular vote in what state, there will be drawn out recounts, the supreme court may get involved, the necessity of the electoral college will be questioned. In the end, it will be impossible to say who actually won, about half the country will be pissed off that the election was stolen, a lot of people will threaten to move to Canada, but nobody really will. One of the millionaires will be declared winner and then spend 4 years making excuses as to why he cannot deliver on campaign promises he made regarding things the executive branch does not control. The news channels will make tons of money.
Quite true. However, many are also vitriolically against Obama qua . . . well, qua n-word, or qua grossly-distorted-perception-of-Obama; while nobody feels that way about McCain.
My WAG is that McCain slaughters Obama and liberals moan for years about closet racism among American whites.
You have to remember that this board is not reflective of the general electorate. In 2004, only a few days before the election, there was a thread here in which about 90% of the posters said they were going to vote for Kerry. The supposed Kerry landslide obviously did not occur in the actual election.
Five months before an election might as well be five years. If one of the candidates has a twenty point lead five weeks before the election, then I might be willing to predict his victory. More likely it’ll still be an open question five days before the election.
Well, what else? No effin’ way is McCain gonna win on his Iraq policy.
I’m not necessarily saying that they would be wrong.
I think it’s going to be a blowout. We had close elections in both 2000 and 2004, and both were times when the Democratic Party had pretty much abandoned the “red” states in terms of organization, money, and coalition building.
Since Dean has come on board, and instituted his 50 state policy, the turnaround in Dem organization across the country has been pretty dramatic. And Obama has a pretty hefty organizational structure behind him and has the funding to campaign in all 50 states if he wants to as well, and he probably will just to help out the downticket races. The DNC and Obama have adopted a long-term party-building strategy, and I think we’re going to see Democratic voter turnout like we’ve never seen before.
Combine that with the current political and demographic climates, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Obama wins the popular vote by a heft margin and pulls a number of red states to the blue column. I’m not saying Utah’s electoral votes will go to him, but I think a number of states that have been trending blue have a good shot of flipping this year.
It’s not really in the closet, though, is it? The networks found it trivially easy to find voters in the primaries who would say on camera that Obama was a “moozlim” or that they wouldn’t vote for a black guy.
I would say it is for the most part. See my comment below.
I would guess that for every person who’s willing to publicly state that he or she wouldn’t vote for a black, there are 10 to 20 who feel the same way but wouldn’t share their feelings publicly.
Just a guess though.