What a crock. This country no more has to unite under Obama than did everyone have to unite under Bush. People are free to disagree. Saying that someone should drop out of the race to lead the country simply because we can’t afford dissent is obscenely anti-American.
Now you’re talking my language. Wager the amount of your choice. I say that Obama gets more than, say, 305 electoral votes. What say you?
Yeah. And you know who else has only one candidate for president? The Republicans.
I think we’ve said enough here.
First of all guys, comparing the Newsweek poll to Gallup poll does not momentum make. In fact it doesn’t signify movement at all. Compare apples to apples, here, folks. You can only compare the same polls if you want to determine some kind of change. Now, adding in the Gallup poll to the state of the race does seem to suggest that the Newsweek poll is an outlier, but it also doesn’t mean that the Gallup poll isn’t. To determine if Newsweek was an outlier we’d need more frequent polling from newsweek. Also remember that the Newsweek poll included Nader and Barr. I am pretty sure this Gallup poll does not.
Of course McCain shouldn’t drop out. Let’s assume that Obama IS ahead by 15. Even if that were the case I’d bet the general will be a good bit closer. I hope not, obviously, but I just feel that’s the way it’s going to shake out.
McCain is this year’s Bob Dole. Somebody has to run, and he had to take it before he dies. If I were a Republican, there’s no way in hell you could convince me to run this cycle. Bush has been below 35 percent in approval ratings for about two years now. The 2006 elections should have cemented it for everyone. 2008 will not be a good year for Republicans. Now if you get defeated in a Primary, it’s experience, but if you get defeated in the General, do you get another chance? Hard to say. I only know of Nixon.
Perhaps it’s me who’s missing something, but when I hover over Florida I see 45%/45% for both, and Ohio gives me 46/43 for Obama.
Well, gosh, that’s a chicken bet. If it’s INEVITABLE that he will win, surely you can give me a better spread than that. 305’s not a huge margin at all.
I don’t know what you’re looking at, but I don’t see any of the data that you’re talking about. When you mouse over the states, you see the most recent polls. I see FL tied at 45 and Obama up by 3 in Ohio.
If you want to talk about trends, look at this graph. That doesn’t look like McCain is closing any gaps to me.
Actually, that is a pretty good margin for a Presidential election. I also think it’s silly to say that certainty of a win must equate to certainty of a blow out.
And don’t forget the other “outlier” of the LA Time/Bloomberg which shows a 12 point lead (15 if you include Nader and Barr on the ballot). Hard really to know who is the outlier honestly or what explains such different sets of results. The RCP average of the polls puts Obama up by 6.9.
What isn’t hard to say is that the op is either whooshing or just goofy. June polling is poorly predictive of November numbers and it is a long way away. That said, Howard Fineman of Newsweek has an interesting perspective on the the importance of polling right now: not that it is in and of itself so predictive but because the perception that it causes will effect fundraising.
The fear, in other words, among some GOP circles is that poor polling can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. (BTW, Fineman’s article also has a discussion of some methodolgic differneces between Newsweek and Gallup for example that may lead to different sorts of pick ups.)
Of course McCain can also use poor polling to his advantage. Future dead even polls are then him capturing the “Big Mo”.
I fail to see how even if he was behind by 15, 20, or 50 points this would in any way compare to the Hillary situation.
Are you confusing me with the OP?
I’m not sure where you get that I have said an Obama win is inevitable, or even INEVITABLE.
So what’s the real reason you seek long odds on your wager? Is it perhaps because you view an Obama win as inevitable?
Click the states, you’ll see the graphs.
See what I mean? I’m not saying one is right and the other is wrong, but I wanna know why there’s a discrepancy.
What you see on the mouse over is what is most recent.
Actually, no, that’s wrong.
I think I’ve figured it out, though. The graph shows the Rasmussen poll, which, on June 18, has an eight point Florida lead, but the rollover seems to be an aggregate of several polls. I wonder why each state isn’t like that?
Hopefully Barack Obama isn’t as overconfident as some people here seem to be. I hate to see him decide the election was in the bag and he could coast into office. We’ll wake up November 5 to pictures of a smiling John McCain holding up a newspaper with the headline “OBAMA DEFEATS McCAIN”.
Jackson lost in 1824 and then won in 1828, but the 1824 race had four different candidates, IIRC. Jackson did manage to win the popular vote but lost in the House of Representatives due to the “corrupt bargain.”
Thomas Dewey was the Republican nominee in 1944, lost to FDR. He tried again and lost (rather famously, in a tight election that the press thought he’d win) to Truman in 1948.
Adlai Stevenson was the Democratic nominee in 1952 and 1956, losing to Eisenhower both times.
Anything could happen in the next four months. Personally, I think this could come down to Veep nominees. If Obama makes a bad choice and McCain makes a good one…
The closeness of the election is not surprising at all.
Many people vote Republican due to core issues: abortion, gun rights, taxes, gays, etc.
These people would vote Republican even if the party nominated a monkey (and they came very close to that in 2000 and 2004)
Of course, there are the corresponding people on the Democratic side, although I think they aren’t as numerous as the dyed-in-the-wool Republicans.
The current closeness of the poll results is to be expected.
Wow. I am still in the belief that McCain will win at least 80% of the popular vote.
I am voting for Obama. Half of the people that say this, however, will buckle
and pull the McCain lever. People think, “Hmmm… war, recession, terrorism…
Ah, McCain!”
Age equals experience to our silly citizens.
Plus, even if McCain DID drop out, the Republicans are so damn popular again
with our voting population, they could nominate Dan Quayle for pres
and team him up with the guy that claimed he killed Jon Benet Ramsey.
If they did, I STILL see a Republican landslide.
America, PLEASE prove me wrong this November.
Vote for change, not what you’re used to.
I think and hope that McCain will lose, but it’s not gonna be a blowout. America is still largely evenly divided on most of the big issues of the day, and each of the two major-party candidate has both assets and liabilities, strengths and weaknesses (you know them as well as I do).
A week is an eternity in politics, and it’s a looooooooooong time between now and Nov. 4. McCain would be a fool to drop out now, and of course he won’t. But given his age and how sick the average American gets of any candidate by the end of any campaign in this era of 24-hour news cycles, this is very likely his only shot at it. Nixon was the last candidate to lose a general election and then come back to win the Presidency, and the political culture has changed a lot since 1968.