Stay Calm

Obama's team was not prepared for McCain's selection of Palin. They wouldn't have been prepared if he had selected Tinkerbell, either. (No, I will not apologize for the comparison!) It was a game-changer, no doubt about it.

We need to give them a little time to recalibrate. Right now we're terrified that McCain's poll numbers will just keep increasing. But that's not the way it has ever happened before. Polls go up, and polls go down. It's not just me saying that. David Broder says so. Gail Collins says so.

What can we do to help win this thing? If you can afford it (and haven't maxed out already), send Obama money.

Update: The Gallup Daily Tracking Poll is out. Click on it for a better look. Use your back arrow to return.

Gallup

The Gallup Daily Tracking Poll today has McCain at 49% and Obama at 44%. Yesterday it was 48% and 45%, respectively. All the interviews in today's poll were completed after the Republican convention, so the convention gave McCain a 5-point bounce.

What are the differences between the Gallup Daily Tracking Poll and the USAToday/Gallup Poll, which showed the numbers at 54% McCain and 44% Obama? The first surveyed registered voters; the second surveyed "likely" voters. The first surveyed 2,733 adults; the second surveyed 1,022 adults, including 63 who weren't registered to vote. [Gallup has a different definition of "likely voter" than I do.] The first I can live with; the second sends me into a blue funk. Both surveys were conducted on the same days, September 5-7.

From USA Today:

"The Republicans had a very successful convention and, at least initially, the selection of Sarah Palin has made a big difference," says political scientist Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia. "He's in a far better position than his people imagined he would be in at this point."

However, in an analysis of the impact of political conventions since 1960, Sabato concluded that post-convention polls signal the election's outcome only about half the time. "You could flip a coin and be about as predictive," he says. "It is really surprising how quickly convention memories fade."

So, don't drink the hemlock quite yet.

Josh Marshall sums it up:

At several points over the last year, I've underestimated Obama's campaign. And I take it that their position now is that they're not going to get knocked off their game. Instead they're staying focused on the ground game in the dozen and a half states where they believe the race will be won or lost. That's difficult for someone in my position to evaluate. The messaging and air war is something that is inherently visible. The ground game is very difficult to evaluate because it's much more difficult to see. So we're left to take it on faith that they know what they're doing, without having much way of seeing for ourselves.

I certainly hope they do. But what I see is a campaign that is for some reason either unwilling or unable to take the initiative in the national messaging war. It's all reactive. And, yeah, that worries me.

I still think those guys know what they're doing, though.

Update: There's now a CNN poll out, conducted on the same days as those above, that shows Obama and McCain tied at 48%. That doesn't leave many people undecided, does it? The poll surveyed 1,022 (there's that number again) registered voters.

I feel better now, thank you.

Oy!

Sometimes it doesn't pay to get up in the morning. The first thing I read was that a USA Today/Gallup poll has it at McCain 54% and Obama 44%. I'm suspicious of this, especially considering the daily tracking polls, but it's a heck of a way to start your day.

Then I turned to economist Paul Krugman's column in the NY Times. To give you a flavor:

So Fannie and Freddie had to be rescued — otherwise debt deflation would have gotten much worse....

But is it enough? I doubt it.

The current U.S. financial crisis bears a strong resemblance to the crisis that hit Japan at the end of the 1980s, and led to a decade-long slump that worried many American economists, including both Mr. Bernanke and yours truly....

...[T]he effort to contain the financial crisis seems to be failing. Asset prices are still falling, losses are still mounting, and the unemployment rate has just hit a five-year high. With each passing month, America is looking more and more Japanese.

So yes, the Fannie-Freddie rescue was a good thing. But it takes place in the context of a broader economic struggle — a struggle we seem to be losing.

Don't worry, though. Sarah Palin will save us.

McCain Moves Ahead. Ugh.

The Gallup Daily Tracking Poll, which averages the three days ending yesterday, has McCain up, 48% to 45%. This is the highest percentage McCain has had since May.


[Click on the graph to get a clear view, then use back arrow to return.]

There are other daily tracking polls. At Sempringham, we keep an eye on the Gallup poll just so we're comparing apples to apples from one day to the next. We could be watching the Rasmussen Daily Tracking Poll, instead, and today wish we were. Rasmussen has them tied at 46%.

These polls are good as far as they go, but what's most important about the numbers is where the respondents live. And they don't tell us that. A general, national poll, doesn't help us figure out where the electoral votes are going.

Still, it feels better when Obama is ahead, doesn't it?

Reasons for Hope

Palin will definitely help McCain in states with the largest numbers of wackos. But those states were going to McCain anyway.

The Obama campaign remembers the biggest lesson of 2000: it doesn't matter who gets the most votes. What matters is who gets the most electoral votes. And with that in mind, this list of voter registration changes, via Hilzoy, is good news.

Scott at Edge of the American West decided to see whether he could track down information on changes in voter registration since the campaign got going in earnest. He has posted his information here. Democrats have gotten more new registrants in all states for which Scott could find data except for Alaska. In some cases, they have outregistered Republicans by considerable margins. Highlights (numbers are voters added between the first and second dates):

Colorado, Jan-July 2008: 13,352 Republicans, 66,516 Democrats, 23,437 other.

Florida, Jan.-June 2008: 77,196 Republicans, 209,422 Democrats, 26,100 other.

Iowa: Jan. - Aug. 2008: 7,515 Republicans, 69,301 Democrats, -62,922 other.

Nevada: Jan. - Aug. 2008: 1,230 Republicans, 51,547 Democrats, 7,550 other.

North Carolina: Jan. - Aug. 2008: 20,363 Republicans, 171,955 Democrats, 123,605 other.

Oregon: Jan. - July 2008: -13,349 Republicans, 122,518 Democrats.

Pennsylvania: April - Aug. 2008: 289 Republicans, 98,137 Democrats.

Update:

What do you know? The AP is on to this, too.

The Magic 50

It was reasonable, wasn't it, to believe that Obama's post-convention bounce was over? After all, the press didn't even get to chew over the Democratic convention in the next day's cycle, because McCain chose the day to announce his excellent selection of Sarah Palin as his VP running mate. [smirk]

And with the way the press played along while McCain tried to parlay Hurricane Gustav into a demo of his Commander-in-Chiefiness, and with the Republican Convention coming up this week, it was reasonable for us to assume, wasn't it, that Friday's 49% was the best Obama was going to get in the Gallup Daily Tracking Poll?

Well, what did we know? How were we to know the Palin choice would turn out to be such an unmitigated disaster? Okay, okay, you're right: we actually predicted it. But how could we know it would happen so soon?

So today's Gallup Daily Tracking Poll has Obama at 50% for the first time ever. Looks like Obama is getting McCain's convention bounce!

Now THAT'S a Poll I Can Believe In!

The Republican National Committee just closed a poll on their site. The question: "Who is a better pick for Vice President?"

The results (you'll need to click on it to enlarge it):



Think they'll run another poll?

Holding at 49%

We were wondering whether the Democratic Convention, and Obama's speech, would be enough to kick Obama's poll numbers over 50%.

It looks like they were not. For two days, now, the Gallup Daily Tracking Poll has been sitting at 49% Obama, 41% McCain. We've got the Republican Convention coming up next week, and the Sarah Palin nomination, so it could be the numbers will start deteriorating.

(Sigh.)

Sunday update:

Now 48% to 42%. The convention bounce is over, and the numbers will probably be closer tomorrow.

Gallup

Two days ago the Gallup Daily Tracking Poll, which averages the 3 most recent day's results, showed McCain at 46% vs. Obama's 44%. Up 'til then, Obama had been in the lead, or sometimes tied.

Today, the poll is reflecting Obama at 48% and McCain at 42%. Gallup attributes the sharp turnaround to a "convention bounce," which, in an earlier article, they say averages about 5%. It's worth noting that one of the 3 days covered by the poll included Hillary's speech, but none reflected Bill's or Biden's speech.

At the end of July, Obama had one 3-day average of 49%, with McCain at 40%, but that's about as far apart as they've been. Can Obama push it over 50%? We'll be watching here.



[Click on graphic for a larger image.]