AP Poll: Obama takes a 7-point lead over McCain

I'm bitter because America is losing.

The race will tighten up. It always does with the media about voting time because the media wants to keep everyone tuned in to watch their advertisements. I have never seen it otherwise.

Were you alive for Reagan's landslides? Or even Bush/Dukakis had Bush ahead by quite a bit and Dukakis never quite getting into it, IIRC.

Yes I was also around for the exit polls in 2004 that still had kerry winning until the vote was counted.

Reagan was not ahead in the polls until the last week against Carter. And Bush41 was at one point 16 points behind Dukakis. Things can and do shift. I for one am not counting my chicks just yet. There is certainly a lot of promising news, but I'm waiting for November.

I keep wondering how Hillary is going to handle this. If Obama wins, that screws with her plans for 2012. If McCain wins, he won't run for a second term, so that gives her either Palin or a fresh challenger to run against.

Don't count the Hildebeast out just yet.

At this time last prez election, Bush was up bysignificant margins over Kerry...

You are incorrect, unsurprisingly.

http://pollingreport2.com/wh2004a.htm

What happened? Did you lose your cut and paste mojo?

While we've been enjoying your absense, Pardot has misquoted and flat-out fucking lied about numbers left and right. We really don't need another Pardot making shit up as if we can't go look it up.

The one silver lining for me if Obama were elected, would be if Russia declared war on England and the US responded by boycotting the Olympics.

Huh. It looks like the lead continues to widen as Obama runs away with this and McCain sinks like a stone. Today the 7 point lead has widened to 5.6 points. (With those numbers coming from polls by Reuters, CNN, CBS News, and Democracy Corps, among others.)

The lead was never 7 points in an average of polls. The average continues to grow, as do the outliers:

The gallup tracking poll now stands at an 11 point lead for Obama. More interesting is the latest updates to electoral vote projections. Yesterday, Real Clear Politics had Obama at +101, but today he is at +119 (total of 277) without counting any states that are within the margin of error. Now McCain not only needs to win all of the remaining toss-ups, but he also needs to win back 9 votes.

Well, I suppose I may be rationalizing but:

1) Carter was an unpopular incumbent with a shitty economy, and, until the debates, people were very unsure about Reagan's experience and ability to handle the job. Reagan pulling ahead at the end was probably the most likely scenario for 1980 given the fundamentals of the election.

2) The stock market took a great big dump in late 1987, and early in the 1988 campaign people were were pretty worried about the state of the economy and ready to blame Reagan and Bush. 1988 saw steady if not spectacular growth and declines in unemployment. Bush coming back from way behind fits the fundamentals of the election.

What are the fundamentals that would cause Obama to lose at this point? The economy and Iraq point to an overwhelming Obama victory. Obama has managed, like Reagan in 1980, to convince the middle that he's at least as ready to lead as the other guy. The sitting Republican President is historically unpopular. Obama has a huge lead in money and in organization on the ground. Unless terrorism strike U.S. shores with a significant event, I don't see how McCain comes back.

Looks like McCain supporters are going a little whacky. Did anyone see that clip on AC360 of some crazy old dude at a McCain rally in Wisconsin getting on the mic and screaming about how socialists are taking over the country? Priceless!

And that with Gallop factored in at 11 which is an obvious outlier by any measure.

If there was a true conservative in the race, they'd likely be able to steal away the Republican vote, considering no one has any clue what side McCain stands on anymore. I guess Barr or other conservatives must be severely underfunded, since I would think McCain sudden foray into populist rhetoric would have soured on most conservatives.

In any case, it's rather sad that McCain has become such an empty shell of a man that has no principles left. I respected him in 2000, but I don't even see how he can look at himself in the mirror any longer.

I was all set to vote for Barr. I really think Obama is bad enough to vote against, but I was just not able to bring myself to vote for McCain. Then about the time of the conventions he started playing really smart. He was on a roll and I was starting to believe in him. But the wheels seem to have come off again. And that's the problem with McCain. He's freaking schizophrenic.

That pretty well sums up the problem I have with him.

I have a choice between:

• A man who not only is about as far from my own values as it is possible to be in mainstream American politics but who also lacks serious political, economic and foreign-policy experience, and whose numerous associations show that he feels all too comfortable with the lunatic left fringe.

• A man who has paid lip-service to conservative values but whose vote-record speaks loudly against that, who doesn't reassure me where Iran is concerned, and who is almost certainly more neo-con than true Goldwater conservative. Just like his opponent, he voted for that modern New-Deal travesty that is the bailout.

• Voting for someone else, knowing that he doesn't have a chance.

Obama is unacceptable to me, period. There is no doubt in my mind, and no room for appeal. And the more I hear about how we need to vote for him so the rest of the world will like us again, the more adamantly opposed to him I am--I will not let other countries dictate how American politics should be run.

But I do not believe for one minute that McCain would be a "good" president. Simply less bad than Obama. Significantly less bad, even.

Actually, McCain is fairly close to me on many social issues (I am "socially conservative" really only with regards to abortion; on things like immigration, gay rights, and separation of church and state, I'm pretty liberal), but I think the last few weeks have made it clear that the issue facing the next president will be the economy. And I am very conservative fiscally. McCain isn't. Not even close.

The one serious candidate out there this time who would actually have policies that would probably give us a true, long-term solution to the current financial mess has no chance of winning. None. Zero raised to the Nth power. I may vote for him after all, but it's like saying, "I sure wish the Franks had had the concept of a state; with that, the Carolingian Renaissance could have been the beginning of something really great for Europe." A devout wish for a reality that could never be.

This election does not please me or reassure me at all.

The aggregate poll-of-polls trendline is now at eight points, and has been remarkably steadily increasing for the past month.

McCain 08 = Dole 96.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/111064/Gallup-Daily-ObamaMcCain-Gap-Narrows.aspx

So when a polling group doesn't use the Howard Dean "the Dem is so awesome that everyone will come out and vote!!!" method for their likely voter survey the Holy One's lead isn't as big as everyone thought it was.

Interesting.

Nah; Bob "Viagra" Dole retained more dignity in loss than McCain will.

He doesn't have to win for it to work to your advantage in the long term, if a party starts losing elections because their target voters are going towards a third party instead you can bet that in the long term they will tend to drift towards leaders aimed to pull those voters back in.

Two points:

#1 - I've seen one Obama commercial during each of the last two commercial breaks. Both have been attack ads.

#2 - Why the fuck is he spending money on a local Alabama channel?

It's national advertising. I saw the ads in New York as well. I've read about people seeing them in California. His goal at this point seems to be not just to win in the electoral college but to win by as much as possible in the popular vote, bringing greater coattails and a clearer mandate.

I'd guess House and Senate races.



Howard Dean with first the Party and later Obama with his campaign have gone for the 50 State Strategy. Instead of just focusing on the 4 or 5 or big Purple States, instead take the fight everywhere.

It looks like it is going to pay off, both in the Presidential Election and also Congressional.

I doubt it's "paying off" though I'm sure Dean will spin it thusly)

The fact that the credit meltdown happened before the election instead of after is "paying off" for the Democrats. We'll never know how the 50-state maneuver wold have worked otherwise.

I reiterate the great tragedy that so VERY many people will ignorantly vote to retain the same Congressmen and Senators who contributed to all this in their blind rush to "blame Bush!"

And nothing good will come of it.

Speaking of the economy, is there any politician (on either side of the aisle) that really understands economics anyway?

I mean, basically the choice between Republican and Democrat is the choice between two different economic ideologies.

But I doubt either of the two men running really, really understands economics. And I wouldn't expect them to. That's not their background. That's why they have economic advisors, think tanks, etc.

With regards to the bailout, how many actual economics experts were consulted about this? People who really understand banking, investing, credit, etc...?

It seems like such a rush decision. Originated by Paulson and Bush, altered by the House and Senate... and the final amount for the bailout bill was apparently just some random high number of dollars that someone thought would be enough to satisfy the Wallstreet people... no actual thought was put into it!

I feel like they went about this whole thing the wrong way. Instead of having a round table discussion with all the leading politicians about this bill, President Bush really should have had a round table discussion with the actual experts.

McCain and Obama were basically unnecessary and perhaps even muddied up the waters by injecting election politics into the proceedings.

I guess my point is if you are a voter who is primarily concerned about the economy then neither candidate is really gonna do it. You need someone like Alan Greenspan or ... someone. I don't really know the names of the top economics people. But somebody like that.

When you are electing McCain or Obama, you're picking a particular economic philosophy but you still have no idea if they actually have a competent staff of advisors or how often they will consult with them.

Really?!?!

I voted Barr, but he is not on every state's ballot. I don't quite get how that works, but apparently McCain is very upset that Barr is stealing his voters. It's a long story, I guess you could research it, if you're not burned out on politics by now.

I agree with most of Barr's stances except he wants to yank troops out of Iraq yesterday if possible, and the Iraqi forces pull their weight.

So you don't think campaigning hard in all states will result in any more votes than if he was only focusing on the handful of swing states?