This was a rough week for McCain. the Financial Crisis and the fade of the convention bounce have left him down in a lot of polls, and led to a dramatic reversal of fortune in 538's map.
Lately I've gotten a little more wary of 538's calculation of national polls. Earlier, when state-by-state data was less frequent, it made sense to buffer the state numbers with the national numbers, but right now I think it's creating a deceptive map. Obama looks like an overwhelming favorite on this map, but state by state, he's in a tight race. Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Michigan and New Hampshire are the four Kerry states where he has to commit the most to defense. The Obama victory plan comes down to holding the Kerry states, plus Iowa, New Mexico, and at least one of this group (Colorado, Virginia, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Indiana, Florida). McCain's best bet is all about minimizing those Bush losses and flipping one of the vulnerable Rust Belt states, particularly Michigan or Pennsylvania.
Obama is overall about a +3 across the polling board. We'll see if that's an illusory bump, with the economic news playing to his advantage lately, or if the race has actually stabilized in his favor.
3 comments:
Doesn't look like the economic news is going to go McCain's way anytime soon, unless maybe the Democrats fuck up the bailout in a talking-point-friendly way.
I agree that the race is closer than it looks on that map, but I think your critique of the 538 methodology is misguided. On a basic level, it just makes sense to use all the good information you have, and we really do know that state numbers track national numbers in particular ways. You shouldn't ignore that even if a particular state poll diverges. More importantly, we also know that electoral math quickly becomes completely irrelevant as the national popular margin grows. A race has to be very close before it matters at all, and three points is basically out of that margin. I think the map is misleading because it looks like the margin by which Obama is expected to win, but if you think of it in terms of the percent chance he has of winning, it's actually pretty intuitive given the current numbers. He is extremely likely to win under current conditions.
Also, is PA a rust belt state? Not saying it's not, I'm just actually curious. I think of those as gray places where sad people get fired from car factories.
didn't you guys mention this a few weeks ago?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080925/ap_on_el_pr/polls_cell_phones
We did:
http://koolkatsez.blogspot.com/2008/09/7-obama-advantages.html
But we basically took it from 538, so we can't take too much credit.
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