The latest Gallup Daily tracking poll puts Democratic candidate Sen. Barack Obama 10 points ahead of GOP candidate Sen. John McCain, and Gallup notes that there are “auspicious” signs for Obama, given the decreasing campaign calender:
Voter preferences in the presidential race continue to be generally auspicious for Barack Obama’s election prospects only three weeks ahead of the eve of Election Day. Obama leads McCain by 10 percentage points, 51% to 41%, among all registered voters, according to Gallup Poll Daily tracking from Oct. 10-12.
The percentage of registered voters favoring Obama has been 50%, 51%, or 52% in each Gallup Poll Daily tracking report since Oct. 4. Support for McCain has been a steady 41% to 43% across the same time period. Thus, although the gap between the two candidates has varied from seven to 11 points in recent days, voter preferences have, in fact, been quite stable.
Other signs that should hearten the Obama camp:
Among typical “likely voters” — the subset of registered voters who appear most likely to vote on Election Day according to their current voting intentions and past voting behavior — Obama’s lead is a slightly narrower seven points, 51% to 44%. This assumes that about 60% of the voting age population will vote, slightly higher than the 55% who turned out in 2004.
Among a more broadly defined likely voter group that only takes into account current voting intentions — not past voting behavior — Obama’s lead is the same 10 points as among all registered voters, 53% to 43%. This group represents approximately two-thirds of the general public, a significantly higher proportion than has turned out in any recent election.
And polls in general?
Real Clear Politics’ average of polls puts Obama 7.4 percent ahead of McCain.
But Salon’s Walter Shapiro, who is a highly perceptive political analyst, notes that there are still some ways McCain can turn it around:
With Barack Obama holding a consistent 6-to-11 percentage-point lead in all recent national polls — the stuff of an electoral vote landslide — the 2008 campaign seems poised to enter its Harry Truman phase. That is the moment when John McCain, like virtually every losing candidate for more than half a century, invokes the ghost of “Give ‘em hell, Harry” and the fading memories of a miracle 1948 electoral upset. About the only worse omen for McCain is when Republican talking points start to include the banalities of desperation like, “The only poll that matters is the one on Election Day.”
Should the Demmies bring out the champagne? No, Shapiro says:
Even amid the current rush to electoral certainty, there are still valid reasons for Democrats to contain any irrational exuberance. Here are four factors (none of them based on race) that could still produce a long count on election night or even a McCain presidency.
Here are the four factors. Go to the link to read details:
–The volatile voter.
–The October surprise.
–Another McCain dice roll. Some details on this one:
But McCain still has a few gambits that he might try, especially if the alternative were a stinging defeat. Some Republicans wonder if the 72-year-old McCain should make an “I will serve only one term” pledge, so that as president he would be free of all political pressure (yeah, sure) in his effort to reform Washington and confront the deadly earmark crisis.
Even more dramatic (and more politically risky) would be a public repudiation of the presidency of George W. Bush. Such a statement would go beyond code words about leadership, offhand references to the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina and backward-looking attacks on Donald Rumsfeld’s tenure as defense secretary. Of course, a full-throated attack on a president of one’s own party is unprecedented during the fall campaign. And it would violate every canon of the Karl Rove playbook about never antagonizing the base (and Rove disciples in the McCain campaign like Steve Schmidt would probably have apoplexy). But it certainly would be a true maverick move — and would suggest that McCain finally understands why Bush has an approval rating below 25 percent in most recent polls.
–Know when to fold them [by only campaigning in states where he thinks he can pull off a win..]
He concludes:
What polling mavens too often forget is that an election is not a computer simulation or a contest decided by the best use of regression analyses in analyzing published data. As a one-time event, all that is required is for a winning candidate to get lucky, very lucky, on Election Day. And a passionate embrace from Lady Luck is probably now the only way that John McCain will ever find himself behind the desk in the Oval Office.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.