Originally Posted By Mr X <a href="http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/09/todays-polls-919.html" target="_blank">http://www.fivethirtyeight.com...919.html</a> You forgot to post this, Darkbeer. What happened?
Originally Posted By Dabob2 Here's what they say: "Let's not equivocate too much here. Over the course of the past several days, there has been a rather dramatic shift in this election toward Barack Obama. Our trendline estimate, which is engineered to be fairly conservative, registers the swing as equaling roughly 4 points over the course of the past week. Changes of this velocity are unusual outside of the convention periods and the debates, especially in close elections. It took John McCain about 60 days and tens of millions of advertising dollars to whittle Obama's lead down from roughly 5 points at its peak in early June, to the 1-point lead that Obama held heading into the conventions. Obama has swing the numbers that much in barely a week. Of course, we never really were entirely outside of gravitational field of theconventions, and probably at least half of this bounceback for Obama is merely the more-or-less inevitable consequence of McCain's convention bounce ending. But the fact is that Obama is in a stronger position now than he was immediately before the conventions. We now have him winning the election 71.5 percent of the time, which is about as high as that number has been all year. There are two reasons why that number is as high as it is. Firstly, we are more than halfway through the penultimate month of the campaign, so even relatively small leads are fairly meaningful. But secondly, Obama has developed a structural advantage in the Electoral College that is understated by the popular vote margin." Of course, this could all switch back - we still have the debates, possible gaffes, unexpected events... but it IS interesting when certain people post certain things and when they don't.
Originally Posted By Sport Goofy I think this election isn't nearly as close as the media horse race watchers want you to believe. I expect we'll be able to go to be quite early on 4 November with a winner already announced. It's even looking like Obama is in reach of states that never fall into the category of "Blue" states -- Virginia could quite easily vote for Obama in November. They're not there yet, but I sense some real momentum building for Obama that is based on concrete ideas and issues instead of the pigs, lipstick, and lies that McCain tried to used during the past few weeks to give himself an artificial bump in the polling.
Originally Posted By ChurroMonster The Palin smokescreen is fading and people are once again looking at McCain and seeing how unappealing he really is. None of this is surprising. The popular vote may end up being somewhat close but the electoral vote looks to be a landslide.
Originally Posted By Mr X I wonder though if this enormous wall street bailout will hurt McCain, or help him. If people think the economy is suddenly "fine", I think that works against Barack.
Originally Posted By mawnck Several weeks yet to go, people. Let's don't count our chickens before they come home to roost. If there's one thing that we've learned during this campaign, it's that things sure do change fast.
Originally Posted By ChurroMonster True enough. I have a hard time believing that anyone could view the economy as being fine in the wake of those huge bailouts. We'll being paying for those the rest of our lives.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan >>Let's don't count our chickens before they come home to roost. If there's one thing that we've learned during this campaign, it's that things sure do change fast.<< Yes indeed. And it only takes one gaffe, one bungled answer, or some unexpected world event to change everything. Neither candidate has this thing locked up yet, and the shifting sands of the electoral map show it.
Originally Posted By WorldDisney So true, remember last election was a virtual tie and could of went to Kerry UNTIL Osama Bin Laden came out of nowhere and many people think him just showing up with a video helped shift it to Bush. Its always been antidote, but who knows? Pleeeeaaaase Osama, keep your butt in the cave for a few more weeks .
