Barack is doing quite well, so far, but we’ll see the McCain ‘campaign’ throw a lot of shit around just to see what sticks.
There’s also a debate coming up tonight. It’s unlikely that Barack will take many risks. He doesn’t have to. He has a commanding lead. McCain will need to take risks or take a seat. If he plays it safe, old, and creepy like the last two, he’s toast.
With the stock market tanking and an election coming up, I’ve been putting a lot of thought into what to do about Al Davis and my beloved Oakland Raiders…but I’m not going to write about that yet.
Here’s what the polls are telling me about the presidential race right now:
It looks pretty good for the Senator from the Great State of Illinois.
I should give a few words of explanation for the graph above. I based the plot on 9 poll trends. What does that mean? It means that each data point is the endpoint of a linear trend, basically a line, drawn through the previous 9 polls. Why 9 polls? I used 9 polls, which represents 3 polls per day for 3 days. Why a trend rather than the average of the previous 9 polls? That’s an excellent question, and one I’m happy to answer.
Take the following data set: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. The mean of that set of data is 5. The endpoint of the trend line I would associate with that data set is 9. Clearly, the trend gives a much more accurate representation of where we are right now than a mean would. Obviously, polling data is never so simple nor so linear, but the concept is the same.
Why do I present a range of Obama leads? I have been reading a lot about the Bradley-Wilder effect, which says that people will say they’re voting for the black guy, and then, scared and alone in a strange voting booth, they pull the lever for the old white guy. I’m not really buying it, but I calculated it anyway.
To account for the Bradley-Wilder effect, I’ve given McCain a 60-40 advantage among undecided voters. I think that’s reasonable. This late in the game, having just suffered through 8 years of Republican mismanagement with McCain promising more of the same, if there are undecideds who haven’t broken to Obama yet, I’m going to guess his dark skin and funny name are an issue with that small group.
Right now, that effect gives McCain a boost of approximately 1.5%. As the election grows nearer, that percentage will necessarily drop with the percentage of undecided voters.
Then, the only change that will occur will be among voting-booth racists. It will be interesting to see if there’s any evidence of that this year. I have become doubtful that it will be a deciding factor, but it will be present, I am sure.
There are some interesting peaks and valleys in the graph. If I had to attribute them to something, and that’s always dangerous, I would say that the first Obama valley resulted from Sarah Palin not totally self-destructing in her October 2 debate with Senator Biden. She spoke in more or less complete sentences, even though it was just soundbites she had memorized. She didn’t take up a serpent or drive the evil spirits out of Biden or try to chase the witches out of town. She didn’t kill wolf cubs in their dens or gutshoot a caribou, so it was a successful night for the McCain campaign.
October 7 was another critical point in the campaign. After Senator Obama and Senator McCain both performed adequately, and Senator Obama managed to avoid looking strange or saying weird things, Senator Obama’s lead again increased.
The McCain campaign, doubtless knowing they were in deep trouble, started playing dirty and throwing shit at the walls. Some of it stuck. That may be what the downturn was after Obama’s high point on October 10.
It will be interesting to revisit this in a few days and see if tonight’s debate changes the race at all. My guess is that it will have a similar effect to the October 7 debate, and Obama will increase his lead slightly.
Tags: Al Davis, Biden, Bradley effect, Bradley-Wilder effect, caribou, debate, McCain, Oakland Raiders, Obama, Palin, trend, voting booth racist, Wilder effect, wolf
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