For those of you who stayed up late for the presidential polling update -- there are not a lot of numbers to look at today. The only state polling is from Washington, where the Elway Poll shows Barack Obama with a 12-point lead. This is consistent with other recent polling in Washington, but represents an improvement for Obama from the previous edition of the Elway poll, which had him ahead by 6.
The other point of interest tonight is the AP-Ipsos national poll, which shows Obama ahead by 6 points -- closely matching the 7-point lead he had in the last Ipsos poll, which was conducted immediately after the Democratic primaries were concluded. The national tracking polls, meanwhile, have begun to diverge, with John McCain retaining a 1-point lead in the Rasmussen tracker, but Barack Obama inching up to a 4-point lead in Gallup.
Since the polls gave us a little bit of a breather today, Mark Blumenthal's point at Pollster.com is worth reading:These data paint a clear picture [...] Most Americans are paying far less attention to news about the campaign than most journalists, pundits and readers of this site. If we assume that all Americans are following the campaign as a jury follows a trial, we are in error.
Pundits -- including yours truly -- generally exaggerate the speed with which political news reaches a saturation depth in the American electorate. There are a few exceptions -- debates, conventions, and major victories in the primaries can have measurable effects almost immediately, and certainly within the first 48-72 hours. So can DEFCON-2 level controversies like Jeremiah Wright. But most of the things we write about here, or the National Review talks about, or Keith Olbermann talks about, take a long time to penetrate the electorate if they do so at all. To attribute the current polling milieu, then, to something like McCain's recent wave of negative advertising is probably irresponsible. It may take weeks to know whether the ads have been effective, or whether there is any sort of backlash.
8.06.2008
Today's Polls, 8/5 (Procrastinator Edition)
@ 2:42 AM
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Wait a second: if there's some good news on one state poll, and some on national polls, why Obama's overall electoral vote count get ticked down?
It's anyone's game...
Hi Nate, I concur with your observations.
Obama has consistently tracked 2-4 points better than McCain since May. As explained by you in earlier posts, the poll trends are fluctuating around a mean. The article on gallup poll trends by Alan Abramowitz, is trending similar fashion with this site’s supertracker.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/08/05/is-obamas-lead-in-gallup_n_117058.html
In my view Obama supporters ought not to panick, as I think McCain’s recent inane ads, and gaffes are going to sink in over the next few weeks to his detriment. I am also of the view that the field efforts in the targeted states will kick in closer to Nov.
Axmx7:
As time goes by the weight of each poll diminishes and therefore becomes less important in the outcome of 538's regression analysis.
Therefore, the reason that Obama's overall electoral vote count went down is because there have most likely been some results favorable to him (presumably in states like CO, VA, FL,& OH) that were taken months ago that have finally been reduced to have little to no impact on the analyses.
Combine this dimishment with some newer, better, results for McCain in the aforementioned states plus a few states that were always going to go to the Straight Talk Express anyway and Obama's electoral vote goes down further...
That is why Obama's EV's have gone from around 320 to 290 in the space of a week.
This, I'm sure, does not explain why - when only VA (with only 13 EV's) has changed columns - there has been such a drastic decrease in the raw number.
The reason as I understand it:
538 doesn't count up each state's electoral votes and apportion them to the of that state victor wholly. Instead, Nate uses his regression to give a sort-of percentage of the electoral vote based on which states are won by which candidate the majority of the time and how often that outcome can be expected.
So for instance McCain wins FL 72% of the time and Obama wins 28% of the time so McCain would get the lion's share of those votes but not the entirety of them. It really matters more in states where the results are close.
Nate,
What about the Conneticut poll by Rasmussen that had Barack up by 15 and the SurveyUSA (I think) poll that had Barack up by 2? I would think that the consistency of VA poll showing the lean towards Obama would begin to tip that state in your calcs
Rasmussen seems to be polling in a league of his own. This can be positive for Obama (Montana-, North Dakota polls) or negative (National Tracker, Ohio). But in many instances he is a bit away from each other pollster.
Maybe that´s because of his likely-voter-model. It´s maybe premature to define what a likely voter is 3 months before the election, however that will change over time and his polls will probably become more and more accurate, but probably also a bit closer to the other pollsters (if the state of the race stays the same). And shortly before the election, it will even make more sense to poll likely voters than registered voters, but not yet.
there also must be an increasing difficulty in doing polls. Let me explain. Gallup tracks 1000 individuals per day. This is not a constant sample but it is new every day. The further you go ahead the less reliable the poll is. Why ? Because the "randomness" is decrasing and the necessity to "adjust" the sample grows. We could verify this by having pollsters tell us how they collect their data. If all names to be called are there from day 1 of the tracking then the poll is ok: you do a fixed number of calls per day and you should obtain approximately the same number of contacts per day. If you are collecting new names every day then the result of the tracking is influenced by the exclusion of those previously polled. It would be interesting to know the ratio of contacts/calls per day. The difference with baseball lies within the model by which data is collected: historic data vs polling. Polling is prone to subjectivity: you will always try to adjust-infere your daily sample in a way that you think will make it more representative of the global population. This is a dangerous excercise. It would be better to sample 10000 (reducing adjustments due to sample size) every 10 days than sample 1000 (with huge adjustements) every day.
Overpolling is a problem
As predicted we are gravitating back towards the mean as memories of Obama's trip overseas and Britney-gate subside. Whether McCain's negative tack will ultimately help or hurt him is not something we will know for sure until the obituaries are written in November. However we can probably conclude that in the very short term it gave McCain a small bump that already seems to be receding. The message as ever to all, Obama and McCain supporters, is to hold your f*cking nerve and not fill your pants (at the front or the back) because of one good or bad poll.
This week Obama has palpably had more success in scoring some hits on McCain not by engaging in a point by point rebuttal exercise but by representing McCain's attack ads as frivolous and frankly insulting to the American people at a time when we need serious solutions. It is quite a powerful message and it's why I feel McCain should stick to arguing policies rather than defecating all over the moral high ground and ceding it to Obama.
On a side note, Obama campaigns today with Evan Bayh in Indiana. We will therefore see whether Pete Kent's prediction that Obama will pick Bayh as his VP this week, proves to be yet another unhatched egg in a battery farm of infertile chickens. I'll give him one thing though. I am 90% sure Obama will pick Bayh but he will do it just before or at the Convention. For his part, McCain is going to wait till Obama decides because his entire campaign is based on a reactive philosophy. If Obama picks Bayh, McCain picks Romney to counter Obama in the mid-West. The problem with that of course is that Romney gives everyone the creeps and no one trusts him, not even McCain.
By the way, on our favorite subject:
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0808/Bayh_shuts_down_Bayh_buzz.html?showall
If that´s true (and I guess we will see in the next few hours), we can probably dismiss the Bayh-buzz as another decoy. And it probably leaves only Biden and Sebelius on the shortlist.
This article confirms Nate's calm approach to the polling, and to Obama's 'collapse'.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/08/05/is-obamas-lead-in-gallup_n_117058.html
Obama suffered a week of bad press, but it has relatively little impact on the whole. Just look at the bottom graph.
I've been saying this for weeks now:
"These data paint a clear picture [...] Most Americans are paying far less attention to news about the campaign than most journalists, pundits and readers of this site."
Unless something of major newsworthiness happens, like Obama's trip getting large coverage and a lot of people seeing or hearing or reading about his speech in Berlin, people are TUNED OUT.
Even if they tune in, once the event passes, they forget about it a few days later.
That makes polling relatively volatile at this point as Prof. Alan Abramowitz points out:
"Having some fun with those who would over-interpret this graph [the wildly fluxuating daily tracker poll], Abramowitz said: "Look--Obama is surging! OMG, Obama's support is collapsing. No wait, he's surging again! Oh no, he's collapsing again! What happened to that 9 point lead? McCain's strategy must be working. All is lost--the end is near! I knew we should have nominated Hillary!"
Explaining the optical illusion, Abramowitz says: "When you group the tracking poll data into ten-day periods it becomes clear that support for the presidential candidates since the end of the primaries has been extremely stable, with Obama maintaining a modest but consistent lead, and that almost all of the day-to-day movement in the data is simply random noise."
I've never seen a single McCain attack ad (I live in battleground state Colorado where he's aired a number of them). I just didn't happen to be watching a particular show when one came on. So, if I were a swing voter, how could such advertising influence me?
I've seen exactly 2 Obama commercials on TV. Just random luck. If I'd been channel surfing at the time, or happened to take a leak at that moment, I'd have missed it.
Yet people swing WILDLY to "explain" every dip or surge in the polls. "McCain's strategy of talking about drilling is working!"
I'd bet almost any amount of money that about 80% of the American people have NO IDEA whether McCain supports drilling or not. And if you told them, they'd probably forget in about a week, because they're simply not paying close attention to anything political at this moment.
And most of the rest already have their minds made up because they're the partisans from both parties who are actually paying attention.
Sometime after the Republican convention this will start to change as people start paying closer attention (we hope).
But, remember that political science studies taken over decades have shown:
1. Since the 1940s consistent over several generations a tiny fraction (significantly less than 10%) of Americans know a lot about politics, can name both their Representative and Senators and can answer basic questions about the structure and function of government.
2. A much larger sample, approaching 50% can answer very basic questions, such as the names of the two candidates running for political office, etc. This faction still doesn't know much: only 40% who can name the three branches of government (actually an improvement over earlier years). Probably a similar percentage can name at least one of their Senators or could tell you at least one idea that either Obama or McCain has.
These people form the overwhelming majority of voters and probably include the base of both parties.
3. Then there's 40% of the American population knows almost nothing whatsoever and doesn't follow politics at all. It's true that a lot of this 40% don't bother to register or vote, which might be a good thing if they refuse to learn anything about what's going on, but at least SOME of them vote.
These are the "low-information" voters everybody talks about. They make decisions based on "gut feelings" about a candidate, tribal identity politics substituting for judgment, whether they'd "like to have a beer" with a politician, or just semi-random reasons amounting to little more than "he looks good on TV,"
As long as these people are the "swing-voters" who can ultimately decide elections there's going to be volatility in the polling, especially months before the election.
Attempting to judge where they stand in August is hopeless. They stand aside.
If they're going to vote at all (this fluctuates by about 5% depending on the election), they'll start paying some attention around the time of the debates, maybe take a nap in October and possibly show up and vote in November, if the weather's not too bad.
Quite frankly, that is why I like Nate's model. It's a best-guess attempt to analyze where the voting trend might go based on demographics and a large number of polls, using a regression analysis.
At least it gives us a floor estimate of where the race stands. And that's still about 80% better than watching the bouncing polls and ferreting meaning out of the sample size and composition of the Rasmussen Ohio poll or something.
Incidentally, this is the first time in a while that I've seen someone use the DEFCON scale correctly, i.e. lower = more serious.
Alex correctly points out the importance of the "likely voter" screen, most of which filter out voters who did not vote last election (including both many young voters and many newer Hispanic voters). Look at how these are diverging for current results: The RV results are all +Obama an avg of 5.25; the LV screen results all +McCain an avg of about 2.5. The net is a swing of over 7. Same as the swing within the USA Today Gallup poll with and without LV filter on.
If the "likely voter" screens are accurate at this point in the cycle, or this cycle at all, then McCain is doing very well.
If the "likely voter" screens are indeed disproportionately filtering out Obama support among the newly engaged (by fact that they haven't voted in the last Presidential election) and those voters do indeed show up on election day, then Obama's lead is very consistent and fairly solid.
I expect that it is the latter and in fact Obama supporter may be more likely to vote than McCain supporters this cycle despite their lack of a voter record but Team McCain had better hope for the former to have any chance at all.
Pretty much, these early polls don't mean much, after labor day is when things get interesting. That being said none of us can get past our poll fix. I try and tell myself it doesn't matter but it never seems to work.
Cugel, I am also in Colorado and have recently had knee surgery so am a captive audience to the TV set though I watch it all Sunday morning while reading the op ed's and I watch MSNBC about 3 hours per night sometimes straying away to see what CNN is saying. I try not to let the dial hit Lou though. I have seen a large number of Mc Cain ad's and for a time I could not believe the number. At least 2 per night plus some other ad's but outside groups and T Pickens twice an hour. I also see Mc Cain on our local stations on Sunday morning. I did see Mc Cain advertisement's on CNN as well. I see very few Barack ad's but what cable news does is play those ad's over and over on each program so whether they run them or not it doesn't matter if you are stuck with a healing knee watchint TV you will have them memorized by the time the new one comes out and you can also go over and over the subliminal messages with the pundits, In Colorado.
The comments this morning are almost as good for me today as Nate's comments. Always enjoy this site to get my fix.
I think the negative ads can be attributed with the drop in the polls.
1) There have been several of them over a couple of weeks,
2) They're very simple, hit on multiple fronts, and easy to understand. i.e. oversimplified and scattershot--they aren't building much of a narrative, but they are likely hurting Obama short-term.
The new Rasmussen Pool say Obama is leaning 45-43. With leaners, Obama is now leaning 47-46.
Well, it appears that Rasmussen is now moving toward Gallup's tracker. Obama now up 45-43 (47-46 with leaners). As McCain's best days' polling fall out of the rolling average, Obama will have 3 or 4 point lead by the weekend. So, we will be right back to where we were.
Rasmussen will release polls for NY and NJ later today. Which is about as exciting as having a beer with Mitch Romney.
Sure but if the election were held tomorrow..."I'd be very surprised".
This is the deadest non-Olympic week of the year. Usually by now we've had at least one convention. There's no way you can hold anybody's interest this long, when nothing's happening. If this election was a movie, you'd be coming back with the snacks.
This is why Obama shouldn't go negative now. All going negative now does is give McCain campaign fodder for when the election actually starts.
Although I got to admit, the Paris Hilton ad was, like, hot.
Just a note on the national tracking polls Rasmussen and Gallup, I kept pretty close watch on these during the Democratic Clinton/Obama primaries and it always seemed that despite the fact they are both rolling averages of the same time period:
a) Rasmussen always seemed more volatile than Gallup.
b) Rasmussen frequently seemed to undercount Obama, by a couple or three points, relative to other polls.
c) Rasmussen frequently seems to lag Gallup by about three days.
I was a bit of a wimp posting this comment, I waited until the Rasmussen data got published this morning to see if the trend up for Obama that Gallup started to show three days ago would emerge in the Rasmussen data today, sure enough it did, three days late.
So, I don’t think the daily tracking polls are necessarily diverging, one just has to wait for Rasmussen to catch up.
I don’t know enough about the methodology to say for sure but my guess was always that Gallup and Rasmussen used different rolling average calculations. But that’s solely based on the observation that the lag time is equal to the number of days in the average, so it could just be a coincidence.
William: I had been wondering that exact same thing (Rasmussen lagging Gallup by a few days).
Re: the Paris Hilton response ad, I thought it was superb. In a very understated and self effacing way, it managed to utterly debunk the McCain ad for the crass and fatuous waste of money that is. She may have gone up in my estimation, not that she cares obviously with a body like that.
Nate's point is a fair one: all of us here are too close to the forest to see the trees. It takes a big event to penetrate the consciousness of the people. Like the Euro trip and its saturation coverage, that wound up being a mixed bag for Obama.
There was something undeniable that moved the polls last week and again something afoot this week that seems to be moving them back. The question is, What?
I think there are two major crosscurrents in this race: one the people want to turn the page and two they are not sure Obama is where they want to turn.
Obama's task is to do what Reagan did in 1980 and convince a skeptical electorate that he was ready to lead.
One could make too much of the Reagan analogy. For many in the middle and for disaffected Democrats, Reagan came to them fresh off his loss to Gerald Ford in Republican primaries as a Right Wing insurgent who many had branded a nut job.
Obama has no such deficit to overcome, he is more of a cipher, an empty vessel in whom aspiration and doubt can be poured in equal measure. He has not yet been defined, the way Reagan had been. This is his opportunity. And McCain's challenge as well.
McCain also must come across as an agent of change. He has a useful reputation as a maverick and as the last serious challenger to Bush within his party. He can do much with this.
In fact, McCain can actually claim to have done everything that Obama apes at doing. McCain is the one with the bi-partisan track record and the history of having bucked his own party. It is both fact and lore. And lore, my friends, is more powerful than fact!
It would be a mistake to assume that McCain will simply run as the alternative to Obama. Right now there is a battle going on the define who Obama is, so both candidates seem to be playing on the same turf. After the conventions, more of that will go on, but it will be time then to convince the electorate, based on positive attributes, who to vote for. It will not be enough for either candidate to simply campaign on them not being the other guy.
Many on the left reflexively think that Obama owns the high ground on the issues, but nothing could be further from the truth. While the Republicans have been damaged by George Bush’s miscalculations on Iraq, the Party’s ideas and ideals remain closer to the political center of this country than do the Democrats.
Rasmussen published a survey yesterday showing that on 9 of the 14 major issues McCain was more trusted than Obama. In each issue Obama had declined over the previous survey, including on the economy where the two are now tied.
As we near the end of the Bush Presidency and the people see that victory is Iraq is at hand, that the strategies proposed by Pelosi, Reid, Kerry and Obama would have failed us, I am fairly certain there will be a re-assessment of Bush that will start to bring his poll numbers up. As gas prices continue to decline, the people will see that they don’t need Obama to solve their problems and that bigger forces than just politics are involved. The same may hold for the economy, if the recovery continues to pick up steam and the MSM decides to cover economic issues honestly. Obama’s “roll the dice on me and on hope” candidacy will be seen as more and more suplerflous.
McCain must re-assure that he will continue to listen and tell the truth, that he will always have the nation’s best interest at heart and that his policies are the ones that work and that Obama’s are the ones that have failed and belong in the past.
It is hard to really know at this point who will emerge victorious, neither side should count their chickens yet.
Blumenthal is right. Those of us who follow the "Horserace" and the daily back and forth between the candidates so closely in July and August (i.e., this year, pre conventions), are way out at the far end of any distribution of the American Electorate. We create our own "bubble" in which we talk to each other as though "everybody" knows that Obama's mean daily average RCP lead over McCain since June 5th has been 4.5 points and the median has been 4.4. I'm a political junkie so I follow that stuff but 99% of the population doesn't.
We all have to take a deep breath and remember that American voters within two standard deviations of the population's mean typically get their information in July and August about the race from (maybe!) a few minutes of "Network News" in the evening, from a quick glance at their daily paper (or tabloid), from a couple of hits a day on their internet homepage where the information is prescreened by (aack!) AOL, Yahoo or Google, from perhaps Stewart or Colbert or Letterman/Leno and, finally from their relatives, friends and colleagues in casual conversations ("Did you hear that Obama's a muslim?" "Yeah, McCain says he's fooling around Paris Hilton?").
So, let's take all of this with a grain of salt and realize that the race will only come into focus for the vast majority of Americans sometime at the end of September when large blocs of voters will either decide that they're sick and tired of Bush/McCain and swing toward Barack or that they don't know/can't trust Obama and go for Johnny Mac.
Anybody know how I can get the Repubs to send me an Obama Energy Plan tire guage. I'd love to have a souvenir!
Interesting poll from PPP today:
"Raleigh, N.C. – John McCain has retaken the lead in Florida, Public Policy Polling’s
newest survey shows.
Barack Obama had taken a small lead in June after trailing in PPP surveys of the state in
March and January, but McCain now has a 47-44 advantage.
Obama earns just 76% of the Democratic vote, with the folks in his party supporting
McCain disproportionately older white females.
“The Democrats crossing over to support John McCain are your prototypical Hillary
Clinton supporters,” said Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy Polling. “Barack
Obama still has some work to do getting those folks on his side if he wants to have any
chance of winning Florida.”
The survey also shows tightening among Hispanic voters over the last month. Obama
now leads by just three points with them after showing a 14 point advantage in the
previous survey."
Pete Kent's most hilarious prediction yet...
As we near the end of the Bush Presidency and the people see that victory is Iraq is at hand, that the strategies proposed by Pelosi, Reid, Kerry and Obama would have failed us, I am fairly certain there will be a re-assessment of Bush that will start to bring his poll numbers up.
Dude, your gifts are wasted here. ("Full many a flower was born to blush unseen/And waste its sweetness on the desert air...")
You need to take your act on the road where it can find a wider audience. It's too funny not to be earning you some serious cash.
By the way...this just in...there will be no elections in Iraq this year.
What was this whole war for? I keep forgetting.
And how will this new development affect Bush's "legacy"... to say nothing of the '08 election dynamic?
Sorry, couldn't get the link to work... here it is:
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-08/06/content_9003083.htm
Interesting that even John McCain's ads are admitting that the country is "worse off than it was 4 years ago"...yet the KentTroll seems to think we are on the verge of a new surge in Bush's popularity.
Nice bit of poetry there, Fillastro.
Your partisan leanings blind you to objective possiblilities and truths.
We will have to wait and see . . .
BTW your point about elections in Iraq is not that telling. the Amercian people care about stability and reduced violence there. Now thatw e are no longer dying in Iraq, I suspect they will be a lot more aptent than they were in 2006.
The Surge worked!
RWD:
McCain is smart to speak to people's perceptions as they exist today. As things shift he can take his foot off Bush's neck.
To speak of the surge is to miss the point entirely (or in McCain's case, it is an intentional attempt to avoid discussing the real security threat to the US).
Did the surge help to reduce violence in Iraq? Sure. Would a similar surge help to reduce violence in Zimbabwe or Nepal? Probably. But neither Iraq, Zimbabwe or Nepal were in any way responsible for the attack on the US that occurred on 9/11. For some reason, Bush, McCain and their conservative apologists seem intent on giving a free pass to the people who actually attacked us on 9/11, Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda.
But we will all freeze in hell before the Republican lie-mongers ever tell the truth to the American people that there was no connection whatsoever between Iraq and Al Qaeda. To discuss the surge is to obfuscate on the real security issue that faces us today, Afghanistan and Al Qaeda operations in north Pakistan. But no, let's not talk about that. Let's talk about the surge and Britney Spears and tire gauges because we have nothing left to offer but fear, lies and the pursuit of power.
It's going to be fun watching Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld answering questions at the Hague next year.
Pete Kent on monday: "We have reached the inflection point I described last week."
Virginia Conservative on monday: "Globe its too late. I think we've begun to see the beginning of the end of the Obama phenomenon."
Lol.
87,000+ viewers responding to CNN's QuickVote say Paris Hilton's "energy plan" has the most promise with 39% of the votes compared with 33% for Obama and 27% for McCain.
There are two separate issues here, I think.
One is that of PRIMING (check wikipedia). This is essentially the same effect for which pollsters rotate the order by whch candidates' names are mentioned: there is a priming effect that makes one pick the first name more often than not. If the interview occurs immediately after the respondent was exposed to favorable or unfavorable images of one of the candidates, a similar effect occurs which is of purely psychological interest and carries no significance at all for the sake of trying to understand public opinion. In this sense, daily responses to ads, news cycles etc. are mere noise - they actually INTERFERE with the polling. It is not that people's views are changed, it is that polling is done in a noisy environment.
The other involves the role of EVENTS IN HISTORY. Now that's a deep matter that exercise me a great deal in my professional capacity as a historian.
I emphatically refuse to believe that individual events produce historical trends. To the contrary: deep historical processes manifest themselves via individual events. What do I mean? That BREAKTHROUGHS HAPPEN AT THE LINE OF LEAST RESISTENCE. If an event "catches on", has a major influence, then this is because underlying structural conditions are ripe for that.
What is the STRUCTURAL process underlying this campaign?
I shall try and say something in a separate comment.
Victory in Iraq? Victory and Iraq do not go together in the same sentence. I love how some people point to the surge as victory in Iraq, as if the 4,130 casualties in Iraq never happened. But hey, the surge worked right? Uhhhh, guys...? Right...?
Pete thinks the public will be more patient now that "we" are no longer dying in Iraq.
Entirely to the contrary, I think the public is just waking up to the fact that our economy is dying in Iraq... seeping away into those hot desert sands while Iraq sits on $80 billion in new oil revenues. How "patient" are people going to be about that?
Iraq seems to have receded in the public consciousness, but I don't think that's the story at all. I think it's just bubbling along at the same subcounscious level this blog entry is talking about, and remains a very important issue.
I'll make two predictions of my own:
1.)The fact that just today the elction law collapsed and Iraq will not hold elections in '08 is going to become a big factor in our own election.
2.) You won't see many "purple fingers" at the Republican convention this year.
Why should any of us take anything PeteKent says seriously? This is the same guy who said the following in the same damn thread yesterday:
"Obama will be criticzed for his Olympic ads. He is intruding on an event where he has no business intruding.
The man just can't help himself."
..and within hours...
"Smart move by McCain to buy time on the Olympics. Can't wait to see his ads."
He's a hack and a shill.
What is the structural trend of the Obama-McCain race?
There were four structurally significant moments:
Entering the February peak;
Exiting the February peak;
Entering the June peak;
Exiting the June peak.
I've said this a couple of weeks back but I will repeat it now. The principle underlying this strucural process is the opposition between the mundane and the transcendent. Obama does well when the political environment is transcendent (rich in transformative potential, pregnant with meaning); Obama does poorly when the political environment is mundane (no transformative potential is sensed, no special meaning attached to politics).
The reason for this is obvious: Obama’s message of redemptive change resonates in a transcendent atmosphere but rings false in a mundane atmosphere.
When does the atmosphere in 2008 become transcendent? When the possibility of Obama’s victory becomes palpable. When he seemed to be about to clinch the nomination (February); when he actually did (June) – suddenly it was sensed that we may be about to witness the historical watershed of an African American president. And this is the elegance of Obama’s campaign: the possibility of its own success makes its own message ring true.
Why did February end? Perhaps partly because of March 4 but my impression is that this happened, in fact, a little before that – with the 3 AM ads and once again – NOT BECAUSE OF THE 3 AM ADS. Rather, the 3 AM ads were effective precisely because the historical trend was ripe for a transition from the transcendent to the mundane (political art is all about sensing the ripeness of the historical trend). Earlier February attacks fell flat and this one worked.
My tentative conclusion is absurd but worth considering:
The February and June peaks both ended after about three weeks because this is, STRUCTURALLY, IN NORMAL CIRCUMSTANCES, as far as one can keep a sense of transcendence.
The mundane, by definition, is more common and more natural. Most of the time will be felt to be politics as usual. Right now we are in a phase of the race which feels most like March-May. We will probably look back on the race and say that March-May, July-August – the periods of low intensity – were Obama’s weaker moments.
This is suggestive of a rather optimistic scenario – that the nearness of the elections, in
october, will work to Obama’s advantage as the atmosphere will be as far from mundane as is possible. (Indeed, my theory acounts for the well known observation that Obama improved considerably in the weeks leading to each individual Primary).
But we shall see: historians’ predictions are typically refuted and Minerva’s owl flies at night.
Humanist, you possess the writer's greatest gift... the ability to put into words the things that people are "kind of, sort of feeling", but can't quite express.
Thank you for your post.
humanist,
I just wanted to say that I really enjoy your comments here and in earlier threads.
I thought the Wrightmare was the end of Obama's February peak, not March 4th.
It will be interesting to see if Wright crops up again as an October Surprise.
Virginia Con,
check Nate's blue dots. The drop was much before March 11th.
Wright was a (very major) priming noise, no more. We can never tell if he could become worse had it not been for The Speech.
Very late October priming noise can interfere with the Elections themselves, for sure (so could be Bush's 2000 DUI).
Humanist: That was a superb post. Once again, you've hit the nail on the head. You really ought to have your own blog.
You last posts on demographic changes since the 2004 elections pointing out that McCain would actually be leading by aroune +4% if the electorate had remained as it was during that election was very useful as well.
The election of a "break-through" candidate is rather like a movie. Whether it's a comedy or a drama, the director cannot try and sustain 2 hours of constant tension, 2 hours of constant humor or constant drama. The audience becomes emotionally drained.
You have to hit your high-notes and then let people relax. Then hopefully the movie ends on an emotional high-note, boy-gets-girl (romance), there's a hilarious finishing scene (comedy), or everything blows up and the hero walks off bloody but unbowed (action-adventure). A lot will depend on whether Obama can hit the oratorical high-note in late October.
You pretty much have to feel that he does very well when people's attention is focused on him and listening to what he actually has to say, rather than distracted by idiot talking head commentary ABOUT him.
I think without Obama's speech his campaign would have ended over Wright. His speech (even though it wasn't really that great) gave the punditocracy an excuse to keep pumping him up.
Thanks Cugel, also for the analogy which I think works very well.
I can't write a blog because I try to keep this 2008 obssession thing somehow under control. I really do honestly try.
Now thatw e are no longer dying in Iraq, I suspect they will be a lot more aptent than they were in 2006.
Six U.S. soldiers have died already in Iraq since the beginning of the month, the highest rate since April. Pete, why do you hate U.S. troops so much that you would lie about whether or not they are dying?
Mad props to both filistro and Humanist. When I log in to a wensite's comments page, I don't expect to see citations of Thomas Gray and Hegelian philosophy. Nice!! Both of you have great comments, too.
KentTroll and NJ "Moderate" (snort) and the other cons on here are just trying tog et all excited over statistical noise, when they know better, of course. Absent a major gaffe from Obama, we all know that McCain't is incapable of winning this election.
And thank goodness that ridiculous "Evan Bayh will be named today because we're spending time in Indiana" nonsense got debunked. Just goes to show you that the national media members aren't much smarter than your average KentTroll.
Overconfidence of the kind that NeoClown sports is precisely why you will all wake up on November 5 and wonder "Wha happened?". It's the fierce urgency of arrogance!"
Oh, forgot to mention yesterday's AL poll from Ras. Mccain continues to build on his huge lead there. Per US Census data (2006) African Americans make up over 26% of the population there.
In VA AAs make up less than 20%.
It does not appear the Obama Southern Strategy is taking hold.
Next to fall off the table: The Mountain West.
Who is the Big Dog among the PUMAs?
Bill Clinton!
In an interview that has gotten lots of play he refuses to acknowedge that Obama is ready to lead.
Once cannot really blame him. With Obama there are grave doubts about his experience and judgment. Even in this year of the change election he never seems able to break through and the groom seems always willing to leave him at the altar.
Clinton who was once the Icon of his Party has been humilated and cast in most unflatering terms by the Obama campaign. They destroyed him in their lust for power. Mrs. clinton was hamstrung by party etiquette and was unable to respond appropriately.
John McCain has shown no such scruples and will continue to use the near term to define Obama as arrogant and out of touch.
The Lifetime poll found something like 20% of former HRC primary voters backing McCain. This is astounding.
Concern Trolls: Saddle Up!
Aw c,mon Pete... have mercy!
If you keep being this cute and adorable, how am I ever going to get any work done?
Seriously, Pete, are you going to answer my question above? Why should any of us take anything you have to say seriously when you were caught in such a blatant flip-flop yesterday? Why do you think you have any credibility? To refresh, for those who missed it, PeteKent stated in the thread on Olympic ad buys yesterday:
"Obama will be criticzed for his Olympic ads. He is intruding on an event where he has no business intruding.
The man just can't help himself."
..and within hours...
"Smart move by McCain to buy time on the Olympics. Can't wait to see his ads."
Did you get whiplash from such a sudden 180 degree flip-flop?
"jason said...
Seriously, Pete, are you going to answer my question above? Why should any of us take anything you have to say seriously when you were caught in such a blatant flip-flop yesterday? Why do you think you have any credibility? To refresh, for those who missed it, PeteKent stated in the thread on Olympic ad buys yesterday:"
LOL!!! "I am against drilling in coastal waters"... "I support drilling in coastal waters", "We are spending to much on NASA and I will devert that money to inner city programs".. "Not only will I continue the current NASA spending levels but I will increase them", "I could no more disown my father than Rev Wright"... "He is not the man I thought I knew"
Enjoy!
bjb1968: So what do you make of PeteKent's statements yesterday? Do you think he's a credible voice on this site?
It's got nothing to do with the presidential race. The guy said one thing and then not an hour later said the exact opposite when it suited him. So I ask again, why should anybody take anything he says here seriously?
OMG, Jason, lighten up! You are taking my second posting about McCain out of context. (Like we all did with rev Wright- shame on you!).
What I said was:
"Smart move by McCain to buy time on the Olympics. Can't wait to see his ads.
His patriotic story and pro-American bent should blend perfectly with the themes of fair but fervent competition.
Can't imagine where he got the idea from, can you?
LOL"
I was making a joke, poking fun at myself and acknowleging Sean's jibe: "Some of our regular knee-jerk Obama-is-an-arrogant-celebrity commenters who posted early in reply may have to recalibrate the kneejerkery."
It's okay. I don't mind poking fun at myself. While I think this election -- as everyone is -- is crucial to the future of the nation, I enjoy the politix as sport/theatre aspect, so I don't take much of what is said here too seriously -- at times.
I for one miss those Anonymous posters who like the Court Jesters of old poked fun at me and others and pointed out hypocrasy and shoddy reasoning. Satire can be every effective (good job BJB 1968)-- except when placed in the cover of the New Yorker. Ahem!
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