Bill Mauldin's Famous JFK Assassination Cartoon - 1963
]]>The race saw incumbent Chamblis get 49.8% to Martin's 47% and 3% for a Libertarian 3rd party leaving this up to a runoff since no one got over 50%.
Most importantly each candidate significantly underperformed their ticket's Presidential nominee. McCain won GA by 205,000 votes vs. W's 600K+ in 2004:
Clearly Chambliss was not as popular as one would think with the state's white voters who did not vote for him, possibly due to the despicable ads he ran against Max Cleland, the triple amputee Viet Nam vet, labelliing him soft on terrorism.
John McCain was here in Atlanta today at a small rally for the devoted for Saxby Chambliss, who has been running negative ads on Jim Martin for the last week. Of course McCain denounced this ad in 2002but now once again is putting his moral compass aside for politics:
"I'd never seen anything like that ad. Putting pictures of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden next to the picture of a man who left three limbs on the battlefield - it's worse than disgraceful. It's reprehensible," McCain said at the time.
Other than that the Chambliss team is counting on every Republican headliner from Romney to Giuliani and maybe Mooselini visiting and their state organization to get out their vote in what will likely be a turnout of 30-35% of registered voters vs. the 75% we saw for the general election.
Saxby is even still defending the above ad today to Andrea Mitchell
:
The ad above is running already.The DSCC is back with a big 5 day ad buy as well starting today.
There was almost ZERO GOTV work here in Atlanta as McCain had no staff or office here other than the local party offices so we have a real advantage now. Celebrtities coming won't help Chambliss much and a new poll shows that in spades.
Our Obama team's from the general are all still together and were nearly all volunteer driven as only 20 or so mostly less experienced field organizers were left here after most were moved to FL, VA and OH.
In our area we had tons of volunteers join us, many from the neighborhood and all over Atlanta and they are all being contacted tonite. Our 3 GOTV HQ's were kept ready to reopen which the main one did today as well.
The good news is that over 100 battle hardened Obama field organizers and directors are back now headed up by Alex Lofton who had organized the state last spring and summer including having 135 organizers and 250 Obama organizing fellows. He is an "A" player and the team that was here is excellent as well.
I attended an organizing meeting Tues. PM and as everyone went around the room many were back here to finish the job they had left in GA in trying to get Barack his 60th Senator and they are fired up and at least half were here before and know their areas and the volunteer groups they built. The teams we had are now being expanded and integrated with our reinforcements and a good mgmt. structure set up to GOTV. Literally as the meeting progressed people were walking in the doors constantly having driven in from OH, Fl, MI et al and were ready to go.
Phone banking started tonite and canvassing this weekend as we get focused on early voting which is the 24th-26th. 50% of the General election vote was early and that was without the large Obama paid staff that NC and FL had. If we had had them here we would have won the state for Obama.
In a week the Martin folks had gotten nearly 1100 emails volunteering from GA and all over the nation wanting to come help.
Veteran's groups are particularly fired up to take Chambliss down, one from NJ says they have 10,000 vets ready to help and 2 of my friends are the GA co-chairs for Vets for Obama, now Martin, and their statewide groups, and retired general and flag officers from around the nation are engaged to help via their perosnal networks as well.
It is going to be a tough fight but now that we have the cavalry here we will have a huge on the ground advantage and amazing enthusiasm and work being done.IF President Elect Obama came to help I believe we would win the election, but he cannot put his political capital on the line as a loss would be embarassing.If Hillary, Bubba or other notables would come it would help so we will see.
This will be very close and the ground game will tell the story and we will have the best one by far with a passion from the Vet community for payback on Chambliss. We'll keep you updated but it will be an intense 2 1/2 weeks.
Links:
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Bill Mauldin's Famous JFK Assassination Cartoon - 1963
]]>Now that the election is over we need to make a few final comments on the unresolved issue of Trig Palin's parentage.
I still believe that Mooselini is not the mother but what we learned from her during the campaign certainly opens another explanation to some credibility.
In August we assumed Palin was a normal politician and we learned she is an ignorant, incurious, inexperienced, small town mayor whose appeal and image are all about looks and being like a bitchy high school girl. The findings from the Legislatures 268 page ethics report confirm all the behavioral issues in spades and recent reports on her ignorance of the most basic civics, the role of the VP et al tell the rest of the story.
Clearly Palin is a ruthlessly ambitious narcissist who continues to focus on herself and not people who helped her or her family. Her rogue behavior the last few weeks with the McCain campaign shows her real stripes which we learned she displayed in throwing every person in AK who ever helped her or got in her way.
Obviously the trip to TX at 8 months pregnant was totally politically motivated for both the VP job she was lobbying for and had hired a publicist to help her with. Alll the attendees were governors that were on the VP list and the meeting was with oil/gas execs and was very secretive. Clearly her pipeline agenda was furthered here as well.
To her the trip and her behavior in flying home was clearly worth the risk and we have seen now in her past behavior around her ex brother in law Wooten, Walt Monegan and a number of questionable ethics issues like expenses, office renovations et al that everything is all about her.
As such the conclusion that Palin putting her unborn, downs diagnosed child at risk was either purposeful or simply driven by her ego and narcissism is at least a plausible option. Her intellectual ignorance probably did not help here either.
2 months ago I refused to believe any adult would purposely behave as she did and endanger an unborn baby. Now it is at least an option that fits with the narcissistic, self centered, overly ambitious woman we have learned a lot about.
I am not ready to say she endangered Trig's life on purpose, she probably assumed that God would protect them or her witch doctor preacher would....or not.
I doubt we will ever know for sure but it is clear that Palin is capable of anything as long as it helps her further her own blind ambition.
We have all read the stories on the poor McCain ground game but now the facts come out.
Quotes abounded as to how many calls they were making etc and my suspicions were that these included robo calls and were in all likelihood mostly robo calls. God knows that is all we got and we got several a day last week here in GA.
From Marc Ambinder:
At the National Press Club on Wednesday, RNC chairman Mike Duncan crowed about how the Republican National Committee and the McCain campaign had contacted 30 million individual voters directly. (This figure includes those robocalls.)
Impressive.
But the Obama campaign / Democratic National Committee turnout program contacted more than double that amount -- about 68 million, according to a Democratic officials.
Now I have managed sales people all my life and this strikes me like the difference in the ones that failed vs. the ones that succeeded. it is pretty simple and a good analogy here.
The failures would count sales calls as those where they left messages or left behind a brochure and could never understand why they failed. Their sales pipelines would include things that were wishes and hopes not hard and fast facts they got from their customers.
Those that succeeded actually were relentless in directly talking to prospects and following up until they did. Messages did not count. Their pipelines tended to be smaller but had facts to back up their inclusion on a report.
Most of the Obama calls were in person and tracked in detail as to whether messages were left, direct contact, number of contacts etc.. I know as I made a lot of them online and in our office. Sounds like a really well managed sales organization.
Meanwhile we see this latest where the RNC guy "crowed" over their results and heard Rick Davis bragging about how they mad 3-4X more "voter contacts: in Ohio the week before the election than Bush did in 2004.
Hmmm, who won? I do not even think they realize that their methodology, tracking and metrics were wrong and all along they were kidding themselves, their supporters and the media that touching people with recorded hate messages was productive.
I'll bet Rove and Bush actually counted things differently too...and they won as well.
However we have some major discrepancies in vote totals in our largest county, Fulton, which is most of the city of Atlanta. While this would not change the Presidential results they would narrow the gap to 2-3% and help Jim Martin against Saxby Chambliss for Senate.
This was my email today to the local reporter on the issues I determined in Fulton County, the largest in GA. Something is clearly wrong here:
]]>Cameron, you mention the larger registration in Fulton County and the high turnout in 2004. Why are the votes counted so far off that then?
I've created a spreadsheet (attached) from the Secy. Of State's data by county and something in the state's largest county, Fulton, is clearly wrong:
- 2004 - Registration - 446,094
- 2004 - Vote - 336,741
- % 2004 - 75.4%
- 2008 - Registration - 554,682 (+108,592, 24.2% increase)
- 2008 - Vote - 346,223 (+9518, +2.7% increase)
- % 2008 - 62.5% (-12.9%) - 2nd to lowest % in the state
- 2004 Early Vote - 17,603
- 2008 Early Vote - 107,938 (+90,335, +530%)
Simply hitting the same % as 2004 would show 77,000+ votes more and Fulton likely would
have exceeded the state average of 74.9%. Cobb was 79%, Dekalb 77.3%, Chatham 78.4%.
Ten largest counties average is 76.5% which adds another 8644 to the total for an 85,000+ gap.
It is inconceivable that Fulton would underperform the state or the large metro, heavily African American counties so where are the votes?
If Fulton is wrong what else is??
John Nail
404-862-6039
In one word - Alot! ....and the MSM is just plain ignorant in ignoring these factors as they still try to make this a horserace.
First, while the latest round of polls - esp. Mason Doxon show a tighening in a lot of states of 2-3 pts and the national polls have swung back 2-3 points from earlier in the week. How can tis be happening? Simple. The timing of state polls lag the daily trackers by 3-4 days.
So by Tuesday the state polls are likely to have swung back a bit as voting starts and at this point 1-3 points is important.
Second, state polls generally do not have cell phone voters included. Selzer, one of the best local Midwest pollsters does and they show huge Obama leads in MN and IA and a tie in IN.
The cell phone effect impacts young voters and minorities the most and is worth 2.8 pts on average according tofivethirtyeight.com.
Third, party ID is 7-9 points to the Democratic side and that alone if turnout holds as we are seeing in the early voting this is a huge wildcard.
Fourth, early voting trends are now indicative of a strong democratic trend, huge African American turnout and the young voters showing up in the states like GA,NC,NC,CO and FL where we have the best stats. Most polls are using outmoded turnout and voter demographics from prior elections and this easrly voting is pointing strongly that these assumptions are not the foundation for this election.
Fifth, the ground game comparisons between the enormous Obama campaign resources and McCain's haphazard, poorly organized efforts relying on local Republican state parties are what it is all about now. McCain has scaled back his ground game to run more ads and I guess robocalls.
GOTV is what works the last few days not ads to get turnout not ads that people are tired of. A good ground game is worth 2-3 pts and a great one like Obama's is worth 3-4 pts. McCain has neither. The vaunted 72 hour strategy of the Bush years is not as well deployed and will not help McCain like it helped Bush.
Sixth, turnout is a function of the above and enthusiasm and McCain's supporters are not enthusiastic. Early voting typically has been a Republican edge, especially in FL where this year Dems have a solid lead. With lack of enthusiasm comes 2 issues - one is simply staying home if the election appears lost and the second is soft support switching to go with the winner which Ed Rollins, Reagan's campaign manager, on CNN just said is worth 2-3 pts in an election like this.
Quantifying this impact is hard but again a point or two is deadly in close states.
Seventh and lastly, THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS THE BRADLEY EFFECT. Any reputable media outlets even discussing this is wasting good air and if anything there will be an Obama Effect where people vote secretly for him once in the voting booth, especially in the South.
Any combination of these factors creates an embarrassing defeat for McCain.
None of this means that we should let up at all but this election is headed to a blowout. Lots of the battleground states will be tight but if any state is within five points for McCain he is in trouble and any state where Obama is leading in the final poll averages will go Obama's way.
My projection is that Barack will win 393 electoral votes - winning every battleground state including IN and GA narrowly, with ND and AZ still options for him.
Remember as theye say on the PGA Tour - "it's not an art show its a math contest" - and on Tuesday you will need your calculator to add up the Obama electoral avalanche.
]]>NC has 1 more day of early voting and the numbers speak for themselves. Obama is banking votes at a furious pace.
Total - 2,350,712 (+294,000)
Non White % - 30.4% - AA - 26.3 - Target is 20%+ to win the election - this has dropped 1.4% the last week.
Dem early votes up 3.2% and Republicans down 7.4%, Indeps. up 4.1%
<30 voters continue to grow and now are 13.9% of
the vote. In 2004 they were 14% so the youth vote is coming out and
should overperform 2004 handily.
66.2% of the total 2004 vote has been reached already when 30.8% voted early!!
1,314,000 more NC voters have voted early this year already than voted early in 2004.
Early voting ended yesterday and nearly 2 million Georgians voted, 60% of the 2004 election total and 3X the 2004 early vote percentage!!! These numbers are so huge that they setup a Democratic win if they can keep up the turnout on election day which seems very likely.
GA - Final Early Voting Stats
Total - 1,994,990 (+227,000) - nearly triple the average of the last 2 weeks.
African American/Latino/Asian - 700K/ 15K / 11K - 726 K - 82,000 African American votes Thurs. alone!!
AA - 35.1%, 700K vs. 833K (25%) in all of 2004. A 40% increase thus far. If this 35% figure holds up that is nearly 400,000 additional AA votes alone.
Non White % - 36.5% - Holding steady - Target is 30%+ to win the election - this number is the key to watch and after 2 full weeks looks like a trend.
We are now at 60.2% of the total 2004 vote when 20.2% voted early an 300% increase.
1.45 Million more people have already voted early than in 2004.
Hold on for a GA going blue surprise!!!
As I blogged before our GOTV office is in the middle of historic, all black and poor, SW Atlanta, near Morehouse, Morris Brown, Clark and Spelman colleges.
One of the things that I have been doing is giving Obama/Biden picture buttons that I bought to any child that I see. I tell each of them that they can be President someday if they study hard like Barack did and the parents or grandparents with them beam and often tell me that the kids are on honor roll etc...Great fun..
If cars stop at the light in front of our office and I see kids in them I go up to the car and hand out buttons.
Yesterday I had 3 or 4 little ones (ages 2-4?) in car seats and EVERY single one knew "Obama" by his picture when their Mom asked them whose picture was on the button.
EVERY SINGLE ONE!!! ..."Obama"
One of my favorite stories was five year old twin boys who when I went up to their car one of the boys saw my Obama button, pointed at it and said - "That's my President" - and told me that he had voted for Obama at kindergarten.
Imagine what Obama as President for 8 years will mean to these kids as they go to school and start to learn about history, government etc.?
Have I met a future President yet? Who knows but the one thing that I think we can guarantee is that Barack Obama as President will have a huge impact on black children ( and really all kids) as a role model and that alone may be his greatest legacy 30, 40, 50 years hence when our future leaders trace their interest in politics and public service back to the election of 2008 and Barack Obama.
]]>Louisiana, the state of my birth, I was born in Lake Charles, may be going blue according to a local news poll:
NEW ORLEANS (KSLA) - A new poll you will see only on KSLA News 12 taken from October 24th through October 26th. The margin of error is 4.5 percent.
Meanwhile the race for the White House continues to tighten up, but there's signs that traditional red states, including Louisiana, could turn blue.
Renwick's poll shows Republican John McCain could be in trouble with Bayou State voters.
Until now, Louisiana was seen as a safe red state McCain, but Renwick's poll shows Democrat Barack Obama is coming on strong.
The poll shows Obama actually leading McCain 47 to 45 percent in favorability among the 500 registered voters who took part in the poll.
"They're only separated by two points and this is supposed to be a McCain state," Renwick said. "There should be a much greater differential if this is a McCain state."
But when asked if the candidates for president were John McCain and Barack Obama, which would you vote for today, McCain is ahead of Obama 43 to 40 percent, well within the margin of error of 4.5 percent. Fifteen percent didn't know and three percent said neither.
RCP does not show LA as competitive with their average at McCain
+14, I had looked at LA earlier today as far as early voting and the
African American voting was going and found similar trends to what we
are seeing in NC and GA and actually mused that it might flip as well. Louisiana's population is 32.5% black and in 2004 only 27% voted for
President. It also was 2% Latino four years ago and will be 3-4% this
year which is another good sign for a really close election In early voting 36.3% of voters are black - a full 35% more than 2004.
267,000 voters have cast ballots thus far of 13.6% of the 2004 vote total of 1.956 M. In 2004 only 6.5% voted early.
If the voting percentages hold at 9% above 2004 that translates into at least 180,000 more Democratic votes. Bush only won LA by 281,000 votes in 2004 and so far 58.6% of early
voters are Dems and 28.6% are Repubs with 11% other. With a strong
Senate race with Mary Landrieu leading handily and an Indian Republican
governor who knows what might happen. We'll keep tracking the early vote here and see what happens.
I've added pictures of our GOTV office below. It is in a neighborrhood that is 1 or 2 on a scale of 10 economically about a 1/3 of a mile from Morehouse College, Martin Luther King's alma mater. We had a volunteer's car stolen last weekend from across the street.
The building you see with the logo on the door is a historic site. It was owned in the 1920's by the son of a slave and he ran a refuge for lynching survivors there. The 2nd photo is around the corner and the new face of the neighborhood, a community center opening election nite.
We purposely dressed up the storefronts and windows to fire up this long forgotten neighborhood for Barack and people really like it.
I also bought buttons for our volunteers to hand out specifically to the kids in the area so that they would have a souvenir of this historic election. Maybe that will help remind them and motivate them over time to reach a little higher...
GA - Thru Wed. 10/29
Chuck
Todd on Morning Joe today said that GA is too close to call and that we
will be up late waiting for the results and that SC could surprise as
well.
At this pace the non white vote will produce 400K new votes for Obama!! Bush won the state by 550K in 2004.
Kerry only got 23% of the white vote and polling shows Obama at 28%. That 5% is worth at least 150,000 votes.
GA is having issues as well with this volume.
Total - 1,572,293 (+185,000) - still more than double the average of the prior 10 days
African American/Latino/Asian - 556K/ 10K / 8K - 574 K - 67,000 African American votes today alone!!
AA - 35.4%, 556K vs. 875K (25%) in all of 2004. A 40% increase thus far. If this holds up that is 360K additional AA votes
Non White % - 36.5% - Holding steady - Target is 30%+ to win the election - this number is the key to watch
We are now at 50.4% of the 2004 vote when 20.2% voted early an 101% increase and we still have a 3 days to go. 693,000 more people have voted early than in 2004.
The latest poll show thas us down one and Chuck Todd at NBC on Meet the Press Sunday had comments on the black turnout and its implications in GA, NC and other southern states.
NC
Total - 1,847.860 (+220,000)
Non White % - 31.1% - AA - 27.1 - Target is 20%+ to win the election - this has dropped slightly the last 3 days.
Dem early votes up 4.7% and Republicans down 8.2%, Indeps. up 3.5%
52.0% of the total 2004 vote has been reached already when 30.8% voted early!!
780,000 more NC voters have voted this year already than 2004.
But guess what? Black turnout in Florida is out of control and most of it will have to be new/sporadic voters.
Florida's population is 15.1% black and only 12% of votes in 2004 came from that community.
Thus far in early voting African American votes are 35.2% of 2,594,000 voters. So lets compare:
2004 All Votes - 7,640,319 - Bush won by 381,000 votes.
2008 Early Votes - 2,594,000
WIth 4 days of early voting + Nov.4th left 32,000 more African Americans have voted than ALL OF 2004!!
McCain is dead in Florida if these numbers keep up with black voters outperforming their prior vote % (12%) by nearly 3X.
In contrast GA (35.2%) is running at 42% over our past voting % (25%) which by itself is enough for us to eke out a win here.
The wildcard for election night is going to be SC, LA and MS where the largest African American populations are. While polls in all 3 show McCain leading by 8-12%
based on the turnout we can measure already there is no reason to
believe these states won't exceed their prior results by 30-60%.
Another new term enters the McCain lexicon. Bill McInturff, the McCain pollster, in a 6 page memo on their internal polls vs the public polls and saying that the race is "functionally tied", meaning that all the dozens of polls are wrong and if you use MOE on their internal polls that the race isn't over....and the Tooth Fairy is coming to the Straight talk Express tonite..
"Functionally Tied"? WTF...
Frankly this is hilarious nonsense and just a continuation of the lies that the McCain campaign actually believes.
The race is to 270 and McCain's goose has been cooked for weeks there and that is only getting deeper.
Bill, if the race is so close then how come you are now advertising in IN,MT, WV,GA, ND and AZ? And CNN, Karl Rove and RCP all have the Electoral College at 286-311 for Obama right now? And you are not even close in any Kerry state? And have lost IA and NM already...
I can hardly wait to not have to listen to the crap being shoveled by the McCain campaign anymore. The scary thing is that they beleive their own hype and lies...