What a difference a week makes! This time seven days ago, I was a nervous wreck, so sure that any number of catastrophic potentialities would certainly occur to derail the Obama campaign. By Wednesday afternoon, simply looking at the cover of the pre-election New York Magazine, with Obama on the cover, and speculation of what [...]

It could just be that Virginia isn’t used to the national spotlight or swing-state status, but the reports coming out say there are real issues going on with voting machines and polling locations in this state. Some supposed dirty tricks at play, too. Read about them here and here.
This was a fear of mine. McCain [...]

OK, post-mortems, reflections, and summary statements are for Wednesday. Today, here’s what I think is going to happen.
Obama is going to win. He’s going to keep Pennsylvania, take Iowa, New Mexico and Colorado. That’s 273, and a win.
He’s also going to take Florida, Virginia and Nevada, and I wouldn’t be surprised anymore if he gets [...]

It’s Halloween, and in the spirit of the day, I’m posting a link to a Rolling Stone article from 2 years ago. It’s written by Robert Kennedy Jr., and it details just how the 2004 election was stolen. Yeah, that’s right. The 2004 election was stolen, and I don’t have any doubts about it. This is what keeps me up at night, and this is why I want margins of 5% or better in all these states. It’s also why I don’t think we can win Ohio unless we’re way ahead. The GOP Voter Fraud Machine is powerful. It’s my fear in Pennsylvania, too.

The Obama campaign released a memo on the strong early voting turnout, and strong new/sporadic voter turnout this year. This is how they break down the numbers/

Marc Ambinder has a post up that bullet points the Republican case for the Presidency. He caveats (probably to avoid mountains of hate mail) that some of it is far fetched, and that it’s simply the case McCain campaign officials are giving to donors and other VIPs. I thought it’d be fun to discuss each point on it’s own, briefly.

Or is it? The same conversations being had about McCain abandoning Colorado have him focusing on Pennsylvania. And when you think about the last few weeks, it makes perfect sense. That doesn’t make it a good idea, but it still makes perfect sense. McCain’s campaign is going to play into racial fears of Obama, and imply a foreignness about him. They’re going for the racist vote. The problem with the message is it probably doesn’t carry as much weight in Colorado, New Mexico, and Iowa, as there isn’t much racist vote to be had there. But Pennsylvania, and Ohio? You betcha.

Suffolk University has two state polls out today, Ohio and Missouri. I don’t believe either one of them:

State

Obama

McCain

Margin

Ohio

51

42

+9

Missouri

44

45

-1

These are both so outside what all the other polls are showing, that I can’t even comprehend them. Obama +9 in Ohio? No way. Not a chance. Obama losing 5-7 points in Missouri over the weekend? No way, [...]

We’re going to hear a lot about national polls tightening, and with the first round of the weekly polls released today by CNN, showing Obama +5 (+8), they’ve got something to chew on. But as I made the point in the previous post, Obama isn’t losing support; McCain is just picking himself up off his floor. You can talk all you want about the national race tightening, but when you have Virginia +10 for Obama, it doesn’t really matter much.

I’m big on statewide polls. So, from now until Election Day, I’m going to highlight polls that I think are important to the cause, and offer a little discussion on them. With that, I’m introducing a new format for all poll related news. I know there’s plenty of places to get the polls, but no one seems to offer any insight into them; their internals, their trends, or their significance. That’s what I’ll try to fill in.