Is Obama Losing In Essential Blue Base States?

God tagging Palin so she can jump in the ring against Obama/Biden in the tag-team no-holds-barred cage/death match 2008

If this recent PA poll pans out and the trend continues, the election is all but over. There is virtually no mix of states that Obama can put together to offset losing PA’s 21 electoral votes. And MI polls keep showing McCain well within the margin of error, with a lot of anecdotal evidence that McCain is much more popular there than Obama.

The crazy outliers of some of the network polls that skew the RCP average seem suspiciously calculated to keep Obama in the running on paper, if not in reality.

For example, the RCP average of polls gives Obama NM by 1pt: but out of the 4 polls, Obama leads in only one, and in that one by 12pts, which seems unlikely seeing as the other 3 have McCain up 1-3pts. The outlier skews the numbers just enough to keep Obama in the running there.

I’ve seen similar situations in CO, VA, NV and the PA polls. The poll supposedly commissioned by Kos has never shown Obama behind McCain, ever, even while other polls showed him down 5pts. The CBS poll is especially egregious about tipping just enough to keep Obama ahead, skewing poll averages with outlandish numbers that don’t jibe with any other poll other than the other wacky number polls.

If these polls are either fraudulent or just badly administered, Obama is seriously behind in not just one but several “must win” states: not just battle ground states, but base states he needs to get to 200 EVs for the final push to 270. Where can these states be made up, if he does, indeed, lose several states John Kerry won in 2004?

Capt Ed:

And in Ohio, Zogby now puts McCain ahead of Obama by six, a substantial enough margin to move the state from purple to red. Zogby, of course, is one of the more volatile pollsters, so any results here should be taken with a grain of salt. However, if McCain takes Pennsylvania and holds Ohio and Florida, it will be difficult for Obama to prevail in a national election.

Obama could hope to capture Virginia, which has eight less Electoral College votes than PA. However, Zogby also shows McCain up by over six points there in its latest polling of likely voters. He may do better in North Carolina than in Virginia, with two more EC votes, as Zogby has Obama slightly ahead by less than the margin of error. McCain has moved out to a similar lead in Colorado now, and has taken a seven point lead in New Hampshire and Nevada.

Momentum appears to have definitely shifted towards McCain. Expect the Obama campaign to focus like a laser on these battleground states and end any remaining pretense at a national effort.

Here’s an odd but plausible scenario: Obama’s internal polling shows him tanking in so many “battle-ground” states that he is keeping staff in states like Florida that he has virtually no chance of winning because he’s hoping for a wildcard mix of states to win, not a definite, plotted out plan of states and EVs in a coherent strategy.

I had figured McCain would hold the Bush’00/’04 states and Obama the Gore/Kerry states and the election would come down to Colorado and New Mexico, if McCain wins the Bush states and either of those, he wins. Those seemed like the most likely to turn. If Obama takes them both plus the Kerry states, he wins.

However, it could be that Obama’s people are seeing really terrifying numbers in PA, MI, WI, CO, NM, NH, VA, etc., negating any positive, rational strategy. He is keeping staff in any state that isn’t a complete washout (he only this week took staff out of Georgia, where he’s down by 20+pts.) in the hopes that lightning will strike and he can cobble together some sort of mix that will give him the magic number even if he loses 4-5 Kerry states.

The way the Obama camp is acting, it sure seems like things are much worse than the 2pt national lead McCain enjoys.

I’ve heard that Dem strategists are telling the Obama camp to handicap their figures 4-6% for the “Bradley Effect”. It may very well be, and this is just speculation, that the Obama camp is seeing numbers that tell them, barring a catastrophic gaffe or change in the political winds, Obama is going to lose and McCain is going to take over 300 EVs.

This is just a gut feeling from the way things are stacking up, and the panic coming out of the Dem party and the Obama camp. Things may be much worse for them, and the entire campaign a house of cards that’s about to come crashing down 2 months before the election.

Obama’s support may not only be eggshell thin, but once the true numbers start breaking through it may have a domino effect: the vaunted youth vote is not going to bother to turn out if Obama is down by a ton on election day. Volunteers won’t bother to show up, money will dry up, the press will start post-mortems before September is out.

There are some vested interests who want it to appear that Obama still has an outside chance, and they may be stacking polls and skewing numbers to keep that illusion alive, but sooner or later the numbers will be so out of whack that, for their own reputation’s sake, the pollsters involved will have to stop gaming the weighting and other statistical tricks that can make a loser appear to be, if not a winner, at least not so badly behind.

All logic would point to the race tightening up by November, but this is not a typical race and these are not typical nominees. The national mood against Republicans has shifted significantly, to the point that all the advantages the Democrats seemed to have this year, 8 years of a Republican president who seems to be very unpopular now, an economy that seemed to be turning sour, a war that seemed to be dragging on with no end in sight, all these things are either turning or will turn.

The public tends to soften towards presidents at the end of their terms, and I predict the mood against Bush will lighten up to where he is back in the 50% approval range, as Republicans, flush with the successes of McCain/Palin, find new fondness for Dubya. The war is already in the rear-view mirror. The economy is well enough, growing 3.3% last quarter, far from a recession.

Things had been going against Republicans for 3 years now, but it’s a long road that has no turning, as they say. And McCain and the Republicans are peaking at just the right time. A month and a half out from the election, a peak tends to indicate that one side has it won. If the election had been held in July, Obama’s dominance all Spring would have coasted him to a win. Now, McCain’s surge coming this late in the game seems to preclude time enough for an Obama comeback, especially since he is a fundamentally weak candidate and there is no prevailing reason to believe he can come back. What can he do or say that he hasn’t already?

He’s left in the unenviable position Hillary found herself in from Super Tuesday until her inevitable concession: hoping for a major gaffe or scandal. Since the press has been so in the bag for Obama and so hysterically over-blown attacking McCain and especially Palin, it’s likely anything they uncover will be discounted by the public, and may in fact backfire and make them yet more popular.

As polls trickle in showing Obama in trouble in states like NJ, PA, WI and MI that he should have locked up, that he must have locked up, the more it seems evident that a McCain win is all but certain, and a McCain landslide, at least of over 300EVs, is very very probable.

still an outlaw in their eyes

Is Obama Losing In Essential Blue Base States?

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