20 August, 2008

A Good Day for McCain

Today is a good day for Senator John McCain (R-AZ) by any measure.

For the first time since both candidates secured their nominations, he leads Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) in the electoral vote count at RealClearPolitics. In fact, the latest map even has McCain over the 270 needed to win.

The news is almost as good at Electoral-Vote.com where he trails Obama by a mere 3 EV's, 264 to 261 with VA's 13 EV's up for grabs (RCP gives VA to McCain, probably reasonable since of the last 4 polls there, he leads in 3 and the fourth is a tie).

The national popular vote average at RCP is the closest since June 1. Obama leads by 1.3.

SurveyUSA has him up by 6 in Indiana, despite an enormous effort by Obama to win this state.

Zogby has him up by 5 nationally.

That doesn't appear to be all that much of an outlier, because GWU Battleground has him up by 1 nationally.

LA Times even only has Obama up by 2 and they tend to favor Obama.

 

Great kid, don't get cocky.

 

There may be problems with all of these polls. It's very possible that every single poll out there is undercounting Democrats. There's been a lot of new Democrats registered this year, and the old statistics on party affiliation may be wrong.

Also, I know that historically Democratic Presidential candidates put up big leads in the summer only to be overtaken in the fall by the Republican candidate. It's very possible that trend won't happen this year and may even be reversed. Republicans tend to do that because of a) outspending their opponents, and b) having a better ground game (the ground game certainly helped in 2000 and 2004). This year, the Democrat has the money and appears to have the better ground game as well.

Don't go counting your EV's until they're hatched.

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