RealClearPolitics today shows Arizona moving from “Strong McCain” to “Leaning”. Arizona is extremely unlikely to actually flip for Obama, but still, it’s more bad news for McCain.
I wouldn’t say ‘extremely unlikely’. Most, if not all, of the recent polls indicate a lead inside the margin of error for McCain.
I haven’t seen a single McCain ad here. I do see quite a few Obama ones. I also see about 10-1 Obama stickers over McCain.
Still, I don’t think Obama will win Arizona. I do wonder if Virginia and North Carolina are called for Obama if that will hurt McCain’s winning percentage here as voters in line go home. I’m not sure how fired up the base is about the same sex marriage amendment. I’ve seen hundreds of their ads.
Arizona’s surprisingly pretty liberal due to the three big universities. Tucson in particular is a hippie oasis. Phoenix is a lot more Republican, though, and I doubt Obama will win the overall state. I’m still voting, though. Can’t tip the scales if you don’t put your weight on it.
We defeated it last time, I hope we can defeat it again. The posters I’ve seen around town look depressingly effective, though.
Georgia has also been downgraded to merely leaning McCain. Having that repeatedly reported as “too close to call”* while the West Coast is still voting certainly wouldn’t be helpful for the Republicans…
*I don’t expect Georgia to actually flip to the Obama column, but who knows? When Dick Morris came out with a map listing Arizona as a “tossup”, I thought his girlfriend was putting LSD in her toenail polish…
There are some signs that the race may be tightening. For example Rasmussen has gone from an 8 point lead to a 5 point lead in the last couple of days. It’s still pretty murky though with different polls moving in different directions. This is probably the stage where we can increasingly ignore the national polls focus largely on the state polls anyway.
I have always believed that the conventional wisdom about the race tightening is wrong and that Obama would maintain and even increase his lead and end up winning by around ten points. After the third debate I seemed to be wrong and the race did appear to tighten for a few days. But it didn’t last and a few days ago Obama was up 8-9 points again. It will be interesting to see what happens in the next couple of days; McCain desperately needs to move the race a couple of points further in his direction. If the race does tighten, there could actually be a bit of suspense on Election day. I don’t think it will happen though.
Obama’s big half-hour ad on Wednesday is probably the last major event of the campaign barring some major surprise. No one seems to know what it will be about but if he nails it that could seal the election.
Or maybe not tightening. Pew results.
The tracking polls have tightened every weekend, especially Sunday. Compared to last week same time, they’re pretty much flat (O+0.5 or something IIRC). If they’re still looking tight in a few days, you can freak out.
Well not really, +5 is still a win after all.
Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com had an interesting comment on the concept of “tightening” yesterday.
He said that there is no meaningful tightening in the polls unless you see the following:
At least TWO polls showing:
At least TWO of the following states: Colorado, Virginia, Pennsylvania
With McCain within TWO points of Obama.
Until then it’s just the usual statistical noise, no reason to be concerned.
Ed
I heard a snippet of McCain’s remarks to his supporters from earlier this morning on the radio a few minutes ago. He’s simultaneously working on the “measuring the drapes” nonsense and the “OMG LIBERALS” scare tactic now. This is a paraphrase:
*“Senator Obama is already making plans with Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid to raise your taxes, spread your wealth around, and wave the white flag of surrender in Iraq!” *
If you take out the parts that are outright lies, you’re left with:
*“Senator Obama!” *
Have we ever seen a presidential candidate start at the center during the primaries then swing way to the left or right during the general election like this? Who the heck is he trying to appeal to now? Protip for you Senator McCain: You’ve already locked up the idiot vote. Why not appeal to the rest of us for a few days?
That Pew poll is a big outlier; no other poll shows anything close to a 16 point race. I tend to follow the Gallup and Rasmussen polls the most and both of them show some tightening. Or you can take a look at the RCP average which has moved from 8 to 6.8 over the last three days. Overall I think there has definitely been some tightening over the last couple of days; whether it lasts and whether it shows up in the key state polls is another matter.
I saw that, and it depends on what you mean by ‘meaningful’ tightening, in Nate’s phrase. There can certainly be a statistically valid reduction of Obama’s lead in the polls, without satisfying Nate’s ‘meaningfulness’ criteria.
I think Nate’s definition is that tightening isn’t ‘meaningful’ until McCain is ahead or within the MOE in 270 EVs’ worth of states.
BTW is there any other news or gossip about the big ad coming up on Wednesday? Not too sure how they will fill up half an hour but if they do find a way of making it work it could seal the deal.
On the whole McCain may have gotten the tax issue to work for him a bit in the last few days but I don’t think it will last. The more you learn about his tax plan the less attractive it becomes compared to Obama’s. Obama has done a decent job defending his plan and making clear that the vast majority will get a tax cut. What he hasn’t done so well IMO is to play offense and explain that the average taxpayer will in fact be paying higher taxes under McCain.
He will probably win anyway but if there is one thing that could really help Obama in the closing stretch it is going on the offense with the tax issue.
Dick Morris is insane. He lists AR as weak Obama when he’s never even been close to leading there, TN, SC, and LA as tossups when Obama’s been down by double digits consistently, has ND as strong McCain even though the last few polls have shown Obama tied or leading, has KY as lean McCain when it’s strong, has FL as strong Obama when it’s at most weak, and IN as weak McCain when it’s tossup. In short, he doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about. AZ as a tossup I can understand, though not agree with, at this point.
538 has also been expecting tightening … there’s just a bigger pool of Obama voters who can swing than there are of McCain ones. Tightening has been built into his projections.
But I still do not think we are seeing it. Seems more likely to be statistical noise. As Rasmussen puts it
Fox News just did a segment on why the polls are biased, misleading, meaningless and/or wrong. 
The sense of desperation is becoming palpable.
An article on polling sites which I am sure will be of interest to readers of this thread.
My favorite bit:
Of course I personally am not the least bit like that.
They would know - they ran a viewer poll where 88 percent of voters said McCain won some of the debates.
What was the gist of their claims?
Someone in Virginia is getting desperate. Flyers have been distributed telling Democrats they should vote on Nov. 5
Despicable.