WE need to not get over-confident about Obama winning. McCain could comeback with an upset. He's done it before. He's a fighter and i admire that in him. We CANNOT count our chickend before they hatch. Obama has encouraged us not to get complacent. If you can vote early, go do it. i voted early yesterday and waited only 10 minutes at the most to get into the voting booth. Tell everyone you know who can vote early to get out and do it. Those who cannot vote early, GET TO THE POLLS on election day and do NOT get discouraged if you encounter long lines. GET THERE EARLY!!!! i am nervous McCain could come back. I will not be releived until the election is actually called for Obama/Biden. SO, READ this article, do NOT be complacent, and do your part to GET OUT THE VOTE (GOTV), and VOTE EARLY!
A VERY thought-provoking article to encourage us NOT to get complacent from The Nation:
Numbers Game: How to Read the Polls Now
posted by John Nichols on 10/27/2008 @ 2:56pm
Barack Obama's poll numbers have been looking good for so long that it
is easy for his supporters to assume a triumphalism stance as America's
longest-ever presidential campaign enters its final week.
But be careful about that. The Democratic nominee for president,
while he is currently ahead of Republican John McCain, stands
perilously close to a dangerous threshold.
How so?
First, a little recent history: In the Democratic primaries last
winter and spring, Obama rarely ran better than his poll numbers. He
either hit the figure he was at in pre-election polls (in states such
as Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania) or fell a little below it (in
states such as New Hampshire and California).
That's worrying because, while the Democrat's poll numbers now look
strong by comparison with those produced for a stumbling McCain
campaign, they still hover around the 50 percent line nationally and in
a number of current and former battleground states.
The McCain camp is betting that primary patterns will hold and that
Obama will finish little or no better than his pre-election poll
numbers. They see that as their opening, on the theory that McCain will
get his base polling figure in any particular state and an overwhelming
portion of supposedly "undecided" voters.
To understand how the theory works, let's put the variables
introduced by third-party candidates and other factors on hold and
simply consider the one-on-one competition in the hotly-contested state
of Florida.
As of Monday in Florida, the polling averages had Obama up with 47.7
to 45.8 for McCain. That leaves 6.5 percent undecided. McCain
strategists bet their man gets three quarters of the supposedly
undecided voters, while Obama takes the remainder. Final result: McCain
50.6 to Obama 49.4.
If the Republicans are right, this could still be a close election -- perhaps even a "Dewey Defeats Truman" upset election.
So, how worried should Obama backers be at this point?
The first answer is: A lot less worried than McCain backers.
The second answer is: There is still some argument for disquiet on the Democratic side.
Let's begin with the numbers we've got.
Various "poll of polls" surveys give Obama a solid national popular
vote lead of 7.3. points -- 50.4 for the Democrat to 43.1 for
Republican John McCain.
Of course, the United States does not hold national elections. But,
on the surface at least, the state-by-state results of races for
Electoral College votes are equally encouraging for Democrats.
The latest analysis of polls from all 50 states by Real Clear Politics
Obama could win as many as 375 electoral votes, to 163 for Republican
John McCain. That's a 212 vote advantage for the Democrat, a
certifiable landslide if it happens.
The popular www.fivethirtyeight.com website puts Obama at 351 electoral votes.
So why worry?
McCain currently leads in polling from 19 states: Alabama, Alaska,
Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana,
Mississippi, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota,
Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming. That adds up to 157
electoral votes.
Obama is ahead in 24 states -- California, Colorado, Connecticut,
Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan,
Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio,
Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and
Wisconsin -- and the District of Columbia. Total electoral votes: 306.
Obama is, as well, looking strong in a number of the remaining
battleground states of Florida, Indiana, Missouri, Montana, Nevada,
North Carolina and North Dakota, which have 75 electoral votes.
So far, so good.
But... Obama's still polling just above 50 percent nationally and at
or below that level in not just battleground states but a number of
states -- Ohio (49.9 percent), for instance, and New Mexico (50.7
percent) and New Hampshire (51 percent) -- that have been moved into
his column by a number of analysts.
Let's assume that the various third-party and independent
candidates, credible and appealing as they may be, do not make much of
a dent in this year of celebrity campaigning and hyper-partisanship.
Then let's consider this scenario: As the presidential race closes in
this final week, the competition narrows a bit. Obama's numbers tick
down a bit and McCain's tick up.
Obama might still have substantial leads in national and state-based
surveys -- four, five, six or more points ahead of McCain. But he could
fall below the magic 50 percent figure.
That's the point at which to begin worrying.
There has been much discussion this year about the so-called
"Bradley effect" -- the phenomenon, most common in the 1980s and early
1990s, of white voters telling pollsters they would back an
African-American candidate, such as 1982 California gubernatorial
candidate Tom Bradley -- and the prospect that it might play against
Obama.
But what if the voters who are uncomfortable with Obama, for
whatever reason, aren't saying that they will vote for or against him?
What if they are crowding the undecided column? And what if they break
at historically disproportional numbers for McCain on November 4?
There are plenty of counter-arguments: Polling doesn't capture the
universe of cell-phone users, polling doesn't accurately assess likely
youth turnout, polling can't offer an accurate take of the impact of
Obama's community-organizing model for political mobilization or the
extent to which this is an "event" election that will draw dramatically
higher numbers of voters to the polls.
This writer's bet is still that Obama prevails. Indeed, there is
good reason to believe that the polls could "open up" in the next few
days -- as has frequently been the case in the past -- and give Obama
the expanding lead that frontrunners often accumulate as a
"go-with-the-winner" mood takes over at the close of a long campaign.
But we are now a nation of poll watchers. (Any why not? Survey
research data is now far more comforting to reflect upon than stock
market tickers.) Traffic on poll-aggregating websites is astronomical.
And in this final week, when we are awash in data, it is important to
read the numbers right.
And the number that matter is not Barack Obama's five-, six- or seven-point lead over John McCain.
If experience is an indicator, the number that matters for Obama is
50.1 percent – or, to be on the safe side, 51- or 52 percent.
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