It does get tiring, but everybody loves the horse race – and besides, now’s the time when trends should solidifying, with the debates having an effect (i.e., if we have debates…).

I’m so damn tired of polls, and of people acting like they make any difference to anybody other than campaign managers trying to figure out where to put their money and their candidate next. The guys have been criss crossing each other for months, and the only thing that’s really different is that the flipping spread is more extreme. That kind of volatility, makes the polls today even more meaningless than ever for predictions — assuming less than zero counts.

Fishing

Has anyone notice the slight swelling in the left earlobe of McCain?
I also noticed Palin’s wrist seems to be a little red…skin cancer from the tanning bed?
So now we have two candidates on the death bed??

I smell plastic grass.

Excerpted from a piece at the NYT Caucus via a link at Drudge:

Two liberal groups – one of them directed by a brother of the Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean – will begin running a graphic attack advertisement Thursday morning raising questions about Senator John McCain’s health.

Officials at the groups, both of which are political action committees that rely on individual donors, said they hoped to show the spot on stations in battleground states in the coming weeks as well. But it is unclear if individual stations will accept the spot: Leighton Akio Woodhouse, a spokesman for Brave New PAC, said late Wednesday that CNN declined to accept the commercial after reviewing its contents this week.

Imagine how bad this ad must be if CNN won’t run it.

Then McCain can go into the debates as the wise elder statesman able to negotiate difficult issues, and if Obama tries to counter him, McCain can say “I was there, and you didn’t do anything for this!”, and point to Franklin Raines and Jim Johnson as part of the problem, while McCain was part of the solution.

Since both the Gallup and Rasmussen polls are 3-day moving averages, we’ll need to wait 3 days after the final bailout bill is passed before we know the effect of the financial crisis on the election. The other polls are basically worthless, because the results can be skewed by including too many hard-core Democrats in the sample.

The problem with national polls (including Gallup and Rasmussen) is that they don’t show how the crucial STATES are voting. This election will probably be decided by six states: CO, FL, MI, OH, PA, and VA, with a total of 107 electoral votes. Since each state has two more electoral votes than the number of Representatives, this represents 107 – (6*2) = 95 Congressional districts, out of 435 total.
If we assume that the number of voters per Congressional district is about equal everywhere, the six critical states represent only 22% of the national electorate.

A national tracking poll might be skewed toward red states or blue states on a given day, then switch the next day, and this can drown out voting shifts in the swing states. A shift in a tracking poll might indicate Obama padding his margin in NY or McCain padding his margin in TX, but says very little about the trends in the swing states.

Polls? Let’s wait
for swing states
after debates.

I’m a poet and don’t know it?

He’s in his mom’s basement … oooops, I mean, his ‘command center’ like the “Warlock” guy in “Die Hard 4″! haha

Yes, I’m being ironic. Up is down, black is white, Margaret Cho is talented. Zogby: McCain now up by two thanks, supposedly, to his decision to suspend his campaign in a statesmanlike manner. The fact that he did this just……

Looked to FNC for news and what do I find? Ron Paul, Maxine Waters, and Rove. Sheesh. We are being very under-served.

Hey, did anybody notice on Rasmussen that McCain is still doing well in the key battleground states?

McCain looks like he is ahead now electorally since he is still ahead in FL, OH, VA, NV, CO, and even NM and NH. Wow.

Obama is gaining in IN and NC, but I just don’t see him taking either of those.

This looks great. As long as McCain can hold FL, VA, and OH and the Mountain states, he wins.

The big danger now is Obama lieing to old ladies in FL which just might get him the state if McCain does not get back there and fight like crazy. Remember how Gore in 2000 was trying to scare all those old people? It almost worked accept for the high Cuban-American vote that went for Bush due to Clinton shipping Elian G. back to Castro.

dmarie on September 25, 2008 at 2:49 PM

Tell your mother the reason FOX has done so well is because it has both Democrats and Republicans on all the shows. That is NOT narrow-minded. It is being fair and balanced; something none of the other networks can claim. Who is really narrow-minded? The one who presents only one side or the one who presents all sides?

dmarie on September 25, 2008 at 2:49 PM

Know your pain… until recently my sister-in-law was similar. Normally a strong conservative, but as a native Arizonan she’s seen the worst of McCain throughout the years and for the longest time was strongly Obama.

There’s apparently a website out there where you can answer a few questions and it’ll tell you which candidate you agree with most. She came straight down the middle, but in her own words “The stuff I agree with Obama on is the stuff that’s not all that important, but the stuff I agree with McCain on is all the things I really care about.”

Better than “Obama Or Bust” at least.

*eats*

I can’t believe one of them is my Mother. She told my sister yesterday not to get all her news from Fox and that those who do are narrow minded. My Mother is an intelligent woman…I just don’t get this. What’s in it for her? Is it because she is a senior and wants entitlements? I truly don’t get it. – dmarie on September 25, 2008 at 2:49 PM

For $5,000 I’ll take care of this. For an additional $2,000 I’ll make it look like a fall in the bathtub.

(I keed, I keed.)

Interesting – Obama only up 5 in Maine. Most electoral projections say this is a deep blue state, and it is – Kerry won by nine points, Gore by five. However, the seven percent undecided is the kicker – if McCain can break enough of them off in the second district, he gets one electoral vote out of this state.

Slublog on September 25, 2008 at 3:08 PM

It’d be more than hilarious if the electoral “tie” scenario worked out except for the one district of Maine, resulting in 270 – 268 McCain. Even more hilarious if Obama won the popular vote. Throw in re-count battles in 1 – 10 states…

You think the screeching from the other side is loud now?

Polls, polls, the musical fruit,
The more you take them, the more they toot.

Pasalubong on September 25, 2008 at 2:35 PM

The MSM like to stroke polls as if they are true results; they think it’s all about the money shot.

Sen. McCain worked while H. Obama jerked (America around)!

Sen. McCain worked while H. Obama jerked (America around)!

Sen. McCain worked while H. Obama jerked (America around)!

Seven percent of those polled also indicated they had already voted using absentee ballots. Obama carried a majority of their votes.

May I interest you in some Barney Frank Hotdogs dipped in Chris Dodd Levenworth Sauce?

HornetSting on September 25, 2008 at 2:59 PM

Dude.