He'll probably finish more closely than you think. But there's no way to tell. There's no doubt a large silent bloc of McCain voters who aren't agitated or toilet-challenged as so many on the Obama side are (yes, even if McCain won by a subsantial margin and all people interviewed on the street afterward said they voted for McCain and named their reasons, a lot of Obama people would shriek that the election was “stolen” [sic] “again” [sic]). But we have to also note the 2006 election, a lot of GOP-voter dissatisfaction with the GOP and the way things are now, and that McCain was actually doing fine against Obama until the economic problems began. Or as we saw, illustrating this earlier,

“My brother, an adamant GOP supporter who voted for Bush/Cheney both times and now deeply regrets it “

That doesn't necessarily mean he won't hold his nose and vote for McCain, though, if he thinks Obama and the Dems are worse.*

The very recent surge by McCain is real but experience indicates so far that it will be little different than the Palin swell around the time of the convention. Note that there is a deep resentment among many to how Palin is being treated. The attacks have frequently been vicious and scummy, by Obama people, by the media, the same people hypocritically silent (they're all campaigning for Obama, after all) when it comes to the hiding of buffoonish Biden.

* If Obama and the Dems run all of Washington, they have no more excuses (though they'll make up some anyway) for their failures. Adults not only have learned to defer gratification, but they also are willing to face the unpleasant rather than procrastinate or avoid it. If it is meant to be a Dem-ruled Washington, let's go ahead and get it over with. [sigh]

Their hope is that people will somehow shelve all their knowledge of the last 8 years, the recent Cheney endorsement and all the ties between the GOP and the crooked BigOil honchos, and somehow find a way to overcome their nausea and check the box next to McCain's name instead of Obama who they're leaning towards.

We'll see. It will be a measure of how smart or how stupid people are really…when you boil it all down..

For the past few weeks, Obama has been leading in newspaper endorsements by a ratio of 2 or 3 to 1. But for late-breaking newspapers (within the past few days), the ratio is much closer to 1-to-1, with several larger-circulation papers breaking McCain's way. In fact, when I updated the total on wikipedia between Oct. 31st and Nov. 2nd, McCain added 41 endorsements (1.6 million circulation) to his tally, compared to 34 (1.0 million circulation) for Obama. A common theme in the late-breaking endorsements for McCain is the ridiculous, false “socialist” charge that has permeated the McCain campaign of late – it seems to have gained some traction.

If this was early October, I might be a little more worried. But right now McCain is so, so very far behind that there's just not enough time to catch up.

For the up-to-date tally of newspaper endorsements, check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspaper_endorsem... . With a few more papers added this morning, the current tally is 465 to 174 in Obama's favor. Between 2004 and 2008, 63 papers have switched from Republican to Democrat endorsements, compared to 9 in the other direction.

The expected vote shares are continuing to converge,

http://iemweb.biz.uiowa.edu/graphs/graph_Pres08...

but there appears no question who the likely winner is — divergence once more.

http://iemweb.biz.uiowa.edu/graphs/graph_Pres08...

Systemic problems could include errors in estimating likely voters (even most of the pollsters admit this that they had to start from scratch in figuring out how to determine likelihood of voting since it can no longer be reliably based on past voting habits with all of the new voters) or the possibility of the enthusiasm gap making it much more likely for Obama supporters to answer the polls. We've seen a pattern in the recent past anyway, where Democrats generally are more responsive to polling, as in the exit polls. Non responders don't get counted, so there's definitely the possibility of a silent majority that's not being counted.

I know this all sounds like wishful thinking since I'm a McCain supporter- and I'll admit it is. But- I think it's very irresponsible of the press to not highlight this possibility more because they're setting Obama supporters up for a belief that the election was rigged if McCain does pull off an upset.