This is where Meryl was last night:
This is what we’re told the polls are saying about Virginia:
And this is what the Richmond Times-Dispatch says this morning.
Times-Dispatch poll shows tight race for president in Va.
The presidential contest in Virginia is heading toward a photo finish.The final Richmond Times-Dispatch Poll of the campaign shows Sen. Barack Obama at 47 percent and Sen. John McCain at 44 percent. Nine percent are undecided — an unusually large slice of the electorate. The profile of undecided voters suggests that some are potentially opposed to Obama.
Because Obama’s advantage over McCain is within the poll’s margin of error — plus or minus 4 percentage points — the contest in Virginia can be considered about even.
And this is what I was told yesterday at the Cantor rally: McCain is within one and a half percent. Undecideds trend against the frontrunner. Virginia carried Bush in 2004 and in 2000. Virginia is still a red state. Don’t believe the hype.
We are being lied to by someone. Many someones, actually, with an agenda, and that agenda is to keep McCain voters home on Tuesday. Don’t listen to them. Get out and vote. Especially if you live in a swing state.
McCain being within 1.5%? What you’ve got is one poll with a pretty small sample size showing Obama up by only 2%, while all the other polls show a clean Obama win. A single poll doesn’t count for much, but in the aggregate they count for a lot, and what they show is that Obama will likely win Virginia by any reasonable statistical margin of error. Even in that one Times-Dispatch poll, undecideds would have to break for McCain by a ratio of 2 to 1.
Also, is it really true that undecideds end up breaking against the front-runner? I’d have thought they’d usually break against the party in the White House — a “Throw the Bums Out!” mentality would prevail.
(Snarky P.S.: it’s kind of funny to see Todd Palin, a guy who used to be a registered voter for the Alaskan Independence Party, standing in front of a sign saying “Country First”. I hope his change-of-heart is sincere.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hdi4onAQBWQ
I think the “undecideds” have decided; they just don’t want to tell pollsters.
James Lewis at American Thinker argues that there’s an “Obama Bubble” regarding polls:
“The Obama Bubble is entirely based on telephone polls to voters who’ve been told they are racist monsters if they don’t vote for O. Under those circumstances people just don’t talk freely.”
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/11/the_obama_bubble_could_cost_th.html
Meryl,
4 years ago, you and I covered the Richmond area elections for The Command Post. This year, we might be stepping on each other’s toes again on election night.
Bill Clinton was supposed to win VA by 4 points; he lost by 4 points to Bob Dole. Each successive election’s polls have underestimated GOP votes by 7%-8%. The state might be a touch bluer this year, but if the polls show Obama with a 1%-3% lead, he will lose VA on Tuesday. The only way he wins this state is if the voter suppression tactics of the MSM work.
Get everyone to vote.
Who exactly is it that has an “agenda to keep McCain voters home on Tuesday”? I agree that everyone should always vote regardless of what the polls say, even if their favored candidate is behind, and no matter what the margin seems to be.
But how is that accurately reporting the simple fact that every single Virginia poll shows Obama in the lead is tantamount to an agenda to keep McCain voters home?
I’ve got to agree that the ‘vibe’ around here is not nearly as intense for Barry as the polls might indicate. I’ve gotten a chance to observe a rather significant number of people over the past couple of months since emerging from my government contractor cocoon, and the ‘real world’ is feeling pretty red right now – even in what one might expect to be ‘blue’ segments of the Hampton Roads area.
The support isn’t really that firm for the one – I’ve persuaded at least a dozen “Obama” supporters to re-consider (or outright on the spot change their minds) by asking one simple question – to tell me why their voting for Barry (without telling them who I favored). They usually give some sort of hopey/changey boilerplate, and become very thoughtful when I mention things like the credit card fraud, the Biden guarantee of a ‘test’ (usually with a reminder of how spectacularly Carter’s foriegn policy blunders have worked out for us), or when I mention that Barack was a footsoldier creating the sub-prime mess, or the 110 million flushed through CAC with no improvement in Chicago schoolchildren’s achievement levels (without even getting into the radical nature of the ‘educational’ agenda being pushed), or the Tony Rezko housing/money trick circus – hell, I usually only have to toss out a couple of items from the list to ‘make the sale’.
And this has been over the past couple of months – before most normal (i.e. non-political junkie internet blog rat types) really have begun to pay attention.
And as they pay attention, the bloom comes off the hope-n-change express rose pretty damned quickly.
If even a small portion of the MSM has an Anderson Cooper ‘oh crap what have we done’ moment, and these aspects receive even a modicum of coverage (not that it has yet) at the last minute – Barack is toast. In Virginia, and in a lot of other places, too.
If McCain pulls it off of course for the next four years we’ll be told that he is illegitimate because he used racist appeals, appealed to racists, whatever.
The newest polls make me, if not optomtistic, then less pessimistic than I’ve been in some weeks. We had a state proposition in 2006 that was branded as racist because it called for the state to treat everyone equally, without regard to race or sex. The last polls showed a toss-up and it won 58-42. Of course the editorialist and columnists considered this the hidden racist factor but my guess was at least as much could be ascribed to people who were just tired of being called racist when they opposed affirmative action and kept quiet.
It would be interesting to know which of these polls is by telephone and which, if any, are not.
The racist label is really wearing thin. I’ve long held the belief that everyone somewhere in their family tree is either jewish, black or chinese is you go back far enough.
Though I live in a VERY blue area(Chicago)I already voted and am working as a Judge on Tuesday.
I really pray that Mac can pull it off on Tuesday.
I’m going to vote for Bob Barr, the Libertarian candidate for president. He’s the only true conservative on the ballot.
GE, let’s think… hm, the media, in the tank for Obama, worked the same tricks on Hillary voters… sorry, you’re right. I have no idea who has the agenda of keeping McCain voters home. I mean, who would it benefit?
Go read the Hillbuzz link in my previous post, and you’ll see a bit more.
@Alex – 538 has a post up which describes which polls include cell phones and which do not. Is that what you are looking for?
I did not complain about George Bush being President 8 years ago and I will not complain about McCain. Then again, I voted Libertarian in 2000. Will you say the same about Obama?
I will NEVER call an infanticide supporting socialist president.
“McCain/Palin’08”!