Month: November 2008

A reader writes:

I decided to spend an hour this afternoon making phone calls for the Obama campaign, and picked up my list via the website. I wanted to call Virginia, because I think it is the most important swing state, and also because I’m on West Coast time, and it would be about 7 pm there. About 20 calls in, I left a message for this one woman, and a couple of minutes later she called me back. She must have picked up my number off caller i.d… She asked why I was calling, and I said "I’m volunteering from the Obama campaign, and am calling to ask you to vote." She laughed a great laugh and said, "That’s what I’m doing, too, and I was on the phone so didn’t answer!"

Bush’s approval ratings:

Nate Silver:

McCain’s chances, in essence, boil down to the polling being significantly wrong, for such reasons as a Bradley Effect or "Shy Tory" Effect, or extreme complacency among Democratic voters. Our model recognizes that the actual margins of error in polling are much larger than the purported ones, and that when polls are wrong, they are often wrong in the same direction.

However, even if these phenomenon are manifest to some extent, it is unlikely that they are worth a full 6-7 points for McCain. Moreover, there are at least as many reasons to think that the polls are understating Obama’s support, because of such factors as the cellphone problem, his superior groundgame operation, and the substantial lead that he has built up among early voters.

McCain’s chances of victory are estimated at 1.9 percent, their lowest total of the year.

Dickerson imagines the consequences:

An Obama loss would mean the majority of pundits, reporters, and analysts were wrong. Pollsters would have to find a new line of work, since Obama has been ahead in all 159 polls taken in the last six weeks. The massive crowds that have regularly turned out to see Obama would turn out to have meant nothing. This collective failure of elites would provide such a blast of schadenfreude that Republicans like Rush Limbaugh would be struck speechless (another historic first).

A reader writes:

This is voting in Oregon. The voters’ pamphlets arrive by mail a few weeks before the ballots.  They can be returned by mail, or dropped into drive by drop boxes. It’s hard to believe anyone votes any other way.

Obama eulogizes his grandmother:

Drum looks into the future:

If this happens, the upshot is that both parties get moved to the right. Most of the Democratic pickups will be in centrist states and districts, which will move the Democratic caucus moderately toward the center. At the same time, it will remove these centrist states and districts from the Republican side, which will make the GOP caucus not just smaller, but even more conservative than it is now.

As a touchstone, the Republican Study Committee, the hardcore conservative wing of the House GOP contingent, currently represents a little over half of their total strength. After Tuesday they’re likely to represent nearly two-thirds, which means that the rump of the House Republican caucus remaining after Tuesday is likely to be almost entirely in the hands of the most faithful of the movement conservative faithful. These true believers are not likely to give in quickly to the notion that hardcore conservative ideology needs a bit of freshening up if the party wants to regain its competitive edge. On the contrary, they’ll probably double down, convinced that they lost only because John McCain and George Bush abandoned the true faith that America truly yearns for.

A reader writes:

I live and work in Claremore, Oklahoma, a town that is about half fringe suburb to Tulsa and half rural county seat. Claremore is famous for giving the world Will Rogers and Lynn Riggs (the author of the play, set in Claremore, that eventually became Oklahoma!). We’re a safe county and a safe state for Senator McCain. I heard last week that we would be having early voting in OK, so I headed over to the county election board over my lunch break on Friday to try early voting for the first time.

The line stretched down most of the block–about 50 people, give or take.

The demographics looked remarkably like our county–mostly white retirees and stay at home moms (many with kids in tow), but a notable contingent of students from the small university up the street, and a smattering of Native Americans and Hispanics.

One of the merits of living in smaller town America is that government service is (usually) friendly and lines are (almost always) short, and we were at the door in under 15 minutes. The poll worker standing at the door said that this was the shortest the line had been all day, and if the pace kept up, they were looking at breaking the county’s turnout record before the polls even opened on Tuesday.

Wake up:

A reader writes:

My wife and I went to vote at Vets Memorial in Columbus on Saturday. I took some pictures of this historic occasion with my cell phone.  I’ve never seen such a huge crowd show up to vote. Great feeling. It took us 5 hours from when we parked to when we dropped the ballot in the box. I thought that the one hour wait in 2004 was extraordinary. No more.

The crowd was made up of mostly college-aged young people, or African-Americans. I mentioned to my wife that the line looked like it was for Obama voters only.

The lines were orderly and well-disciplined.  Everybody seemed to be good-natured and united in purpose, so were willing to endure the wait. Nobody around us got upset if someone left the line to grab lunch from the concession area or to use the restrooms. Although seemingly not required for security, there was a very light presence by the Sheriff’s office.

To say that the poll workers looked frazzled would be an incredible understatement, however, the lady who helped me was still chipper and ready to help.

Wherever they could, volunteers were marching up and down the lines with free refreshments. Outside, there were several volunteers from the Obama campaign handing out literature and refreshments but strangely, no presence from the McCain campaign that I could see.  I saw one McCain/Palin t-shirt and one yard-sign in a car window, but that was all the visible McCain support that I found.