So, everyone seems to be a little worried lately about the state of the race, and I have a one word answer for y’all.  Breathe.  Something that Obama campaign has known from the very beginning is that national polls mean nothing. (Remember when Hillary was +20 in the national polls in January?)  Fortunately, we’ve all got Nate over at 538 to bring some well-needed perspective here:

McCain’s gain in our popular vote projection has been 2.1 points. Note, however, that his gains have been less than that in essentially all of the most important swing states, including Ohio, Michigan, Florida, Colorado, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire. Only Virginia is on the other side of the line, and then only barely so.

As a result of all this, the Electoral College remains too close to call, even though McCain has a 1-2 point advantage in the popular vote. Obama now has an 8.4 percent chance of winning the Electoral College while losing the popular vote, which is far and away the highest that this number has been all year. And that number may get larger rather than smaller, once polling filters in from other red states like Texas, Nebraska and South Carolina. Palin may have been a brilliant VP selection — I think even Palinophobes like me have to concede that right now McCain’s looking pretty savvy — but some of that sheen is taken off by her somewhat lackluster effect on the Electoral College.

Palin brought home the lackluster Republican base (namely evangelicals), which has boosted McCain’s national numbers, but has had very little effect on swing states.  Now make no mistake, this gives McCain some breathing room, but he still needs to veer left and capture the center in order to pull this thing out.

So, don’t be alarmed.  Ignore the national polls.  Watch the swing states.

(BTW – This whole thing is part of the reason I’m a huge fan of the electoral college, but that’s a post for another day.)

Tags: Barack Obama, election, John McCain, politics, polls, Sarah Palin

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 11th, 2008 at 7:58 pm and is filed under Some Pulp. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.