What's Keeping Back Obama in Ohio? What's Keeping Back The Undecided?

Monday, October 20, 2008

HORSERACE, JOHN MCCAIN, BARACK OBAMA

Wow. A lot of people think my pep talk is the gloomiest thing they’ve ever heard.

The national tracking polls put Obama up from about 3 percent to about 7 percent. If it's on the low end, McCain can close that gap. I know my liberal readers are convinced that the undecideds will break to their guy, but 2004 saw the end of the "undecideds break 2:1 in favor of the challenger" rule of thumb. If the case for Obama is so obvious, with constant reinforcements from high-profile endorsements and ads everywhere, why are 4 percent, 6 percent, 11 percent (depending on the tracking poll) still undecided at this point? Why not just say, "yeah, I'm on board with the popular guy that everybody says is going to win"?

What worries me is the number of battlefields McCain has to triumph in. Having said that, he can afford to lose a bunch of these once-red states like Iowa, New Mexico, Nevada and still win. If he wins Pennsylvania, he can even lose Missouri and still come out with 270 electoral votes.

Ohio is intriguing, because even as Obama has gotten signficant bumps usually-red places like North Carolina, Missouri and Florida, he’s still barely ahead, even or trailing in Ohio. Now, my source on the ground said he was seeing strong resistance from the classic Hillary Democrats – white, elderly, working-class, rural, etc. (He noticed that GOP Senator Mike DeWine's abysmal record on guns hurt him with these demographics in 2006; the NRA's endorsement of McCain should ensure the gun vote shows up November 4.) Rasmussen's got the state tied and Mason-Dixon puts McCain up by 1 percent. At a time when everywhere else is breaking hard for Obama, one has to wonder if Team Obama would be better off not counting on the Buckeye State.

Now, if Obama really is in trouble in Ohio, it would be surprising to see Pennsylvania turn out dramatically different than its neighboring state. The ingredients for a McCain win in Pennsylvania are there – Murtha declaring his half of the state racist, Biden declaring, “no coal plants,” Obama’s “bitter cling” description of the small towns. Obama's going to offer a variation of his primary strategy, which is to win big in Philly and hope to keep it close everywhere else. Well, that approach got him a 10 point loss up against Hillary.)

(We'll hear a lot of people touting Obama's admittedly impressive crowd of 100,000 in St. Louis, Missouri over the weekend. But in April, he attracted his then-record crowd of 35,000 in Philadelphia. That sounded like a lot - it was a lot - but it was only a small fraction of the 2.3 million people voted in the Pennsylvania primary. In 2004, 2.7 million voted in the presidential election. )

So if McCain carries Ohio and Pennsylvania, he can afford to lose a lot elsewhere, and still come up with 270...

10/20 11:23 AM Share