I’m not talking about their lack of reporters, statisticians, pundits, or fancy touch-screen graphics.  I’m talking about the very real possibility of a landslide on Tuesday.  I like to spend a little bit of time on the weekends watching cable news, just to catch a whiff of the narrative.  And the narrative these days is, “What the heck is Obama doing campaigning in all these red states, and even running ads in Arizona, when this election is so close?”  Y’all already know the answer to this, because your jobs don’t depend on the fact that people remained interested in the horse race.  But just to recap, here’s where we are:

Fivethirtyeight

Pollster.com

RCP

John McCain has very real problems.  Barack Obama’s fivethirtyeight landslide percentage (>375 EV) is currently at 38.5%.  So basically, the only argument you could make in order to convince someone that this race is close is if the polls in a large portion of the United States are completely and utterly wrong, which does have a small possibility of being right.  But then you throw this into the mix:

These ground campaigns do not bear any relationship to one another. One side has something in the neighborhood of five million volunteers all assigned to very clear and specific pieces of the operation, and the other seems to have something like a thousand volunteers scattered throughout the country. Jon Tester’s 2006 Senate race in Montana had more volunteers — by a mile — than John McCain’s 2006 presidential campaign.

And then there’s this:

** In NV,  43% of Democrats who have voted early are new or sporadic voting Democrats

** In NC, 19% of Democrats who’ve voted early are Democrats who’ve never voted in a presidential election before

** Says Plouffe: “We are going much better with Hispanic voters in Florida than certainly was the case in 2004 and we believe in 2000. Puerto Rican voters, Columbian voters, and doing surprisinglky well with younger Cuban voters.”

** “In Florida, a quarter of sporadic voting Democrats are turning out out that the same rate as very likely Democrats.”

Democrats are currently outnumbering Republicans in early voting in Florida by 250,000 votes.  In 2004, early voting in Florida ended with a 40,000 vote Republican advantage.  Democrats are also banking a solid majority of votes in Washoe county in Nevada, a county that voted Bush in 2004.

And finally, a little perspective for good measure:

I know it’s a little scary to be a Democrat and actually be winning, and I’m also aware of the track record we have as a party to blow it in the end.  But I have to say, the evidence is overwhelming.  Now, this doesn’t mean we should just sit back and not do anything and coast across the line, but I just want y’all to be prepared for the party on November 4th.  It’s gonna be rockin’.

Tags: election, politics, polls

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 1st, 2008 at 2:24 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.