Oh, I don’t think this is a done deal yet, but I’ll breathe easier if Obama wins Wisconsin tomorrow.
But can you give some for-instances of Obama’s vote trailing the polls? Even in NH, the polls got his vote share right - they just missed Hillary’s last-minute bump.
Of course, it helps to rely on the better pollsters, such as Survey USA and Research 2000, as opposed to ARG and Zogby.
I dunno… ARG has Clinton up by 10 in Wisconsin and Obama up by 10 in Texas. What’s not to trust?
I can’t quite tell if this is sarcasm, but here’s a link to a very useful chart . Among the major polling firms, only Mason-Dixon has consistently performed worse than ARG this cycle.
If this weren’t so serious, it would be comical.
So let me see if I’ve got this right. The woman who’s been campaigning on the premise that she’ll be “ready to lead on Day 1”, isn’t even familiar with the Texas primary system within just a month before their election. The woman who’s been boasting about winning in Texas doesn’t even know how the delegate system works there, so she hasn’t been planning an actual strategy for winning there, she just assumes she will.
The Obama people, on the other hand, have been broadcasting the rules for weeks now, have had people on the ground in Texas explaining the system, organizing precincts, and making Powerpoint presentations.
While Obama’s people are organizing and strategizing how to win the hearts and minds of Texans, and at the same time explaining to people how they’ll need to vote in their particular precincts, the Hillary team is off whining about how unfaaaaaaaaiiiiir the system is, setting up their excuses early.
Wah, wah, wah.
It’s a fair point. To the extent that their campaigns are the biggest organizations Obama and Clinton have ever managed, Obama has shown much greater ability as a manager. His team has had fewer conflicts, raised more money, been better on the ground, and had greater discipline. By virtually every measure he has proved to be better at that job.
I suppose arguably you’re only as good as your Penn or your Plouffe, but selection of the right people is pretty key to being President too.
Senator McCain’s campaign is also an interesting case study. On the one hand, it has been pretty dysfunctional. On the other hand, he had the courage to revamp it and was able to make a fairly impressive comeback.
Maybe campaign management doesn’t mean much in the grand scheme. But we are considering three Senators for President, each of whom has managed no larger organization than their own campaigns.
What Richard Parker wrote here and what Shayna said about the Clinton Campaign not being organized and Clinton herself unaware of the intricacies of her Campaign, further says to me that she is riding on her name and the more time Obama is given in a state the more people get to know him, the more people get in their cars and drive to vote for him.
I have less and less doubt he is going to be the nominee. Everyday he’s picking up another big endorsement. I’m excited to see the actual totals for tomorrow’s primaries.
I’d just like to say that this seems a particularly insightful point.
An interesting analysis.
Of course it is not too dissimilar to the math I did on my own previously, but hey.
Her best case is to take it to the mat at the Convention in an ugly Party crippling process. I hope that such is realized soon by the supers who support her.
There are so many polls you can always find one that was way off, but I was thinking of California. We were led to believe the race had tightened considerably, but Hillary won surprisingly easily thanks perhaps to earlier cast postal votes.
And I went to bed early, banking on Survey USA’s final poll of a 52-42 Hillary edge.
The primaries and caucuses are really about enthusiasm of voters and a good infrastructure and organization for getting those people to the voting booth or caucus room. Polls vary in being able to tap those effects. The weakest are those that use rolls of registered democrats in open primaries.
Rasmussen polled MN voters, who prefer McCain to Hillary by 5%, but prefer Obama to McCain by 15%. That’s a 20-point swing.
Of course, Minnesota is probably one of those states that don’t matter. 
They already know it. That’s the problem, everyone expected Hillary to coast to a win, then a couple months ago, Obama stepped in with superior management, organization, likeability and similar plateform - this led to what we have right now. A horserace where it is unlikely Clinton can actually pull it off. Math is math, and he’s have to shoot himself pretty seriously in the foot or suddenly lose all the organization he’s been building. I doubt either scenerio is going to happen. Big
smile for all us Obama fans.
Granted it’s not over until the fat lady sings, but she’s currently dressed waiting for the curtain to open.
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Likely because they elected a pro wrestler to govern over snowmobile-related crimes…
Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty has been rumored to be a likely McCain VP candidate. That might swing Minnesota for McCain, and it might not. I told my wife we’d have to leave Minnesota if it went red.
Speaking of ARG, they’ve given us the following polling from Wisconsin:
Feb 15-16
Clinton: 49%
Obama: 43%
Feb 17-18
Clinton: 42%
Obama: 52%
I’d love to believe this means Obama will blow out Wisconsin by 10% tomorrow but, more likely, it means that ARG is primarily staffed by monkeys.
SurveyUSA, the best polling firm in the election so far, has Clinton by only 5 in Texas. That’s terrible news for her. If she loses Texas, she’s toast. A 5% win might even mean more delegates for Obama in that state.
Let’s hope “wordsgate” doesn’t have any significant impact.
Screw that. Let’s hope it does, since the only plausible impact will be to show how desperate Clinton is.