Black represent 40% of the newly registered voters. Who are the other 60%??? My guess is at least a pretty good percentage of them are young voters also registered by Obama field workers. If so, and he captures a significant percentage of those voters, that makes it a lot easier to get to that 30% magic number of white voters. Georgia won't decide the election - as others have said, if he wins Georgia, he's already won everywhere else he needs to. But it would be a hell of a thing to win it.

West Virginia, although its closer, is a lot less likely just because the the whole Appalachian thing. I doubt there are many movable votes there. I don't know if there was much registration or GOTV activity there either - anyone know?

Posted at October 9, 2008 11:24 AM in response to Shocker -- Obama Wins Georgia!

I got polled by Gallup last night. I told them I was voting for McCain because I don't want ANYONE thinking this is in the bag! Maybe we'll look back on it and say it WAS in the bag by early October, but we would be idiots to look forward a full month and assume it already is!

IF IF IF IF

Everyone keeps working hard for this election and Obama's field operations stay as good as they've been and the youth vote turns out in historically big numbers and the black vote turns out in historically big numbers, maybe it'll be a big win. It will not rival Reagan's EV totals - its crazy to even start thinking about that. Lets lock up the handful of states he really NEEDS to win and, after that, the rest is gravy. I wanna see the damn pot-roast before I start planning on the gravy.

Posted at October 4, 2008 1:06 PM in response to The Coming Landslide

This is actually a really horrible suggestion. Because if they put Tina Fey on the ticket or even planned to install her after the election, I'd probably have to VOTE for that ticket. McCain could win with Tina Fey. That would be bad. Don't do it. Ride Palin all the way back to the "A" states.

Posted at September 28, 2008 5:12 PM in response to The Tina Fey Solution, or the Republic's Salvation

Philadelphia Inquirer also. Not just small papers and the Times. I didn't bother to watch it or complain about it, but I noticed it last Sunday.

Posted at September 19, 2008 8:06 PM in response to Who Is Funding Distribution Of DVDs About Radical Islam In Campaign Home Stretch?

How about "They broke it - We'll fix it" in keeping with his "we, us, it's not about me its about you" theme.

Posted at September 16, 2008 6:35 PM in response to Barack's 6 words to ride to the White House

I live in a suburban Philly county that's been Republican controlled forever, but is also fairly moderate. When we moved here, I half thought about joining the GOP just because the Republican primary was where all of the action was. There were conservative Republicans and moderate ones, but whoever won the primary won the election. So that was really the only place to have any influence.

Couldn't bring myself to do it though. I've voted for any number of Republicans but I couldn't abandon the party I've always been part of and still fit ideologically. And now, lo and behold, the parties are roughly at parity and the Democrats routinely get people elected. So I'm glad I stayed.

But I get your reasons for checking out the GOP and if you can help reform it and, in the meantime, bring some of your peeps over to Obama, you'll have done a mitzvah.

Posted at September 14, 2008 9:13 PM in response to Why I Hate Being A Republican - Yet Joined The Party Anyway.

I think Obama ought to ambush him at one of these appearances. Get McCain on Oprah or Leno or something, wait for him to issue his challenge, and then have Obama stoll out and take him on. Unannounced. No warning. I'm sure the logistics make it impossible, but it would be the best political theater imaginable. And with no agreed to ground rules and with the candidates each able to question each other, follow up questions, and directly respond, it would probably be the best debate of the election. And with McCain not getting to veto any ground rules that didn't work to his advantage, I think Obama would chew him up and spit him out. But if not, it would still be useful.

Posted at September 13, 2008 6:21 AM in response to I love Barbara Walters! I love her!!

I saw another new one in PA this morning. I think it was new - first time I'd seen it anyway. Tying McCain to all of his lobbyists in some detail. Pretty good.

Also, on the Obama and crowds thing. I saw him in Lancaster, PA a week ago yesterday - the day of McCain's acceptance speech. There were over 10,000 there. It was outdoors, so it didn't feel all that huge, but it was really big for a city the size of Lancaster.

Posted at September 12, 2008 8:16 AM in response to New Ads: Obama Presses "Change"; McCain Spot Says Obama's "Star Is Fading"

Before we get too confident, we should keep in mind that this election is also more of a crapshoot than most. First, Obama's ground game could drive huge turnout among young and black voters and totally overwhelm the polling assumptions about 'likely voters'. That's on the good side. The downside is that Obama is black. Don't underestimate that. The Bradley effect was HUGE when it came to Bradley and big when it came to Wilder. How big will it be with Obama? Who the hell knows. But I'd bet that quite a few white folks, particularly older ones, will get into the booth and not be able to punch the ballot for Obama. I don't know if it will be determinative, but we'd be idiots to assume it won't be.

Keep on working. Take NOTHING for granted. I've voted "D" in every election since 1980 and have been on the winning side exactly twice. There's absolutely no reason to assume we're going to win this thing. We should. We shoulda won the last two also.

Posted at September 7, 2008 10:36 AM in response to On The Cusp of a Landslide. Keep Fighting!

OTOH, if you'd really LIKE to freak out just a little bit, this will help, from Nate Silver:

Although the topline results don't make it obvious, it appears that John McCain had a fairly strong night of polling in the daily tracking polls, which are the only numbers we have to look at today.

The Gallup tracker now shows Barack Obama leading by 2 points, down from 4 a day ago. When I attempt to estimate the daily results from the topline numbers, however, I get the following:

Wednesday: Obama +7.8
Thursday: Obama +2.4
Friday: McCain +4.2

So Obama's numbers are being propped up by a strong night of polling on Wednesday, which will cycle out tomorrow. He also held up relatively well on Thursday following Sarah Palin's speech (note: our estimate of his Thursday numbers has been revised slightly upward from yesterday's figures because of a methodological improvement I made to my tracking poll algorithm). But yesterday, McCain had a good night, most likely leading by somewhere in the range of 4 points. There is a good chance that tomorrow's Gallup numbers will show a tie or a McCain lead.

As for Rasmussen , it actually has Barack Obama gaining a point, and moving into a 3-point lead. However, it still looks like McCain may have had a relatively good night on Friday. My tracking poll algorithm will have more difficulty with the Rasmussen tracker than the Gallup tracker because Rasmussen uses a more complicated weighting procedure (i.e. weighting by party ID), meaning that we're a step further away from seeing "raw" numbers. But with grain of salt, here is what I show:

Wednesday: Obama +4.9
Thursday: Obama +3.8
Friday: Obama +0.3

Once again, I would caution against overinterpreting any of this. Conventions should produce bounces -- they are the equivalent of tens of millions of dollars in free advertising time. What we don't know is how to contextualize these bounces. An average convention bounce is about 6 points, but we don't know how the Democratic and Republican conventions interact with one another, particularly as it affects the timing of the respective bounces. Moreover, Fridays (and Saturdays) are tough nights to poll. My hunch, as I've stated before, is that whatever numbers McCain winds up with over the weekend, Barack Obama will probably be polling a couple of points ahead of those numbers by the end of the upcoming week.

Posted at September 6, 2008 4:41 PM in response to Weekend Freakout Alert