The McCain Surge: Pipe Dreams or Prescience?

My friend Ed Morrissey has apparently had a little bird whispering in his ear who is claiming that McCain may sneak up at the last moment and capture Minnesota from Obama.

This morning, one of the first e-mails I opened was from the McCain campaign, claiming that the presidential race in my state had pulled into a dead heat. Sure, I thought — Minnesota barely has Norm Coleman ahead of Al Freakin’ Franken. Obama should be up 15 here under those circumstances, and in fact the MinnPoll has Obama ahead by 11. Survey USA says it’s a margin-of-error race, though, and says Obama’s tripping up Franken

James Joyner probably feels bad about pouring cold water on Ed’s hopes, but does so anyway.

Certainly, another 10 Electoral Votes — a swing of 20 — would be helpful. The problem, however, is that Obama’s up 11.5 in the RealClearPolitics average for Minnesota, Obama has never trailed in the state since polling began in May, and the trend followed the national one away from McCain since mid-September. Eight of the last ten polls in the average have Obama up by double digits, with the outliers showing leads of merely 8 and 5.

Further, SurveyUSA appears to be the most erratic poll in the sample by a longshot. Going back to last December, McCain has had leads in precisely four Minnesota polls. All of them are by … wait for it … SurveyUSA.

RCP is good, but I usually wind up going back to check with Nate Silver. As of 3 am this morning he has a couple of the last, well modeled polls showing Obama still holding a modest but apparently solid lead and rates the state has having only a 2% chance of “tipping” tomorrow.

I can never shake the doubts I always feel about pollsters at any given time, and this season is no different.

I keep hearing rumors from friends on the Right that we’re all in for a shock and McCain is going to pull out a last minute electoral victory of just over 270 while getting slaughtered in the popular vote. Frankly, after 2000, I can’t even bear to think of what will happen if that’s the case.

There is one bit of anecdotal information I can toss in here, though. I’m on the same sets of mailing lists from all the campaigns as many bloggers. Until recently, most of the material from the McCain supporting sources was pretty much what you would expect – warnings about Obama’s tax plans, charges about redistributionism, endless documentation about the Illinois Senator’s radical associate, etc. Over the last 96 hours, though, that has changed. Virtually every item I receive is focused on one thing only… charges of voter fraud instances, primarily in Ohio and Pennsylvania. I’ll confess, I find myself wondering if there isn’t an army of lawyers getting ready to challenge the election results in those states, no matter what the returns look like, and try to toss the election into the court system.

Ah well. We should know in 48 hours tops.