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Obama-McCain Matchup: Blowout Or Trench Warfare?

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Carissa Hoffer-Halliet
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« on: July 27, 2008, 06:25:37 pm »



Thomas B. EdsallEdsall@huffingtonpost.com | HuffPost Reporting From DC 


Pollster.com has at the top of its front page a chart suggesting that the presidential election is all but over.

The public opinion experts who run the site say states with 284 electoral college votes - 14 more than the 270 needed to win - lean to or firmly support Barack Obama; states with 147 lean toward or are in John McCain's camp; and 10 states with 107 electoral votes are tossups.

In other words, the site suggests that Obama does not need to win a single tossup state -- Colorado, Missouri, Florida, Virginia, Arizona, Nevada, Montana, North Dakota, North Carolina or Indiana -- to take the oath of office on January 20, 2009.

There are some in the political science community (if community is the right word, perhaps it should be called a cauldron) who share this view and others who are less sanguine about the prospects of an Obama blowout.

One of the first shots is this dispute among academics was fired here on the Huffington Post. In an essay titled "The Myth of a Toss-up Election," Alan Abramowitz (Emory), Tom Mann (Brookings) and Larry Sabato (Virginia), jointly declared:

[V]irtually all of the evidence that we have reviewed - historical patterns, structural features of this election cycle, and national and state polls conducted over the last several months - points to a comfortable Obama/Democratic party victory in November. Trumpeting this race as a toss-up, almost certain to produce another nail-biter finish, distorts the evidence and does a disservice to readers and viewers who rely upon such punditry....

It is no exaggeration to say that the political environment this year is one of the worst for a party in the White House in the past sixty years. You have to go all the way back to 1952 to find an election involving the combination of an unpopular president, an unpopular war, and an economy teetering on the brink of recession....f history is any guide, and absent a dramatic change in election fundamentals or an utter collapse of the Obama candidacy, John McCain is likely to suffer the same fate as Adlai Stevenson.


In a direct rebuttal to "The Myth of a Toss-up Election," James E. Campbell (SUNY-Buffalo) countered with an essay titled "Anybody's Ball Game." He makes these points:

*Dissatisfaction with President Bush does not necessarily translate into antipathy to Senator McCain...The McCain campaign would certainly prefer it if President Bush's approval ratings stood where they were in 2004, but their drop from that point does not put the election out of reach for the Republicans.

* Republicans have one clear advantage in this election. Despite the party's best efforts, Republicans will nominate the most electable candidate in their field....[W]e have recent and hard evidence that Senator McCain votes as a moderate conservative and Senator Obama votes as an extreme or consistent liberal.... If Americans are really looking for a moderate who can work in a bipartisan way to solve the nation's problems--from energy prices to international crises--McCain has the record they are looking for and Obama does not.


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Vanderbilt's John Geer, in turn, is by no means convinced that McCain will lose as badly as Adlai Stevenson in 1952.

"We all know it is a Democratic year. But that does not mean Obama will win. Yes, the odds are in his favor. But there are at least 3 reasons why the election may be close, with either McCain or Obama winning," Geer said.

First, according to Geer, "we live in a post 9-11 world and the public has to be comfortable with a candidate's ability to deal with foreign policy. Many voters are not yet comfortable....Second, McCain is a good candidate....Third, the last two presidential elections have been very close. Yes, there have been Democratic gains in some quarters and turnout may be up. But turnout was up in 2004 from 2000 and Republicans had made gains right after 9-11 and yet the election remained close."

Robert Y. Shapiro (Columbia) also sees a close election, but he adds that the closeness means the quality of the two campaigns will become all the more crucial: "This is where I see Obama as the likely victor not only in the popular vote but in winning, perhaps by very close margins, in the past blue states he needs to hold on to, and in Ohio and states in the west and possibly a few surprises. This will happen if, as I expect, Obama outcampaigns McCain."

Along similar lines, Michael S. Lewis-Beck, of the University of Iowa, said he and a colleague, Charles Tien of Hunter College, City University of New York, have just written an essay forecasting "that Obama will win, but just by a hair. The reason the contest will be so close is because of what we call 'ballot box racism.' We estimate that about 11 or 12 percent of voters who would otherwise vote for Obama will not vote for him because he is black. Our forecasting model, if uncorrected for the race factor, predicts a landslide for Obama. But once the 'racial cost' is corrected for, we get a bare Obama majority (about 50.6% of the two-party popular vote)."

Helmut Norpoth of Stony Brook University has an even closer prediction based on his model: a virtual tie, 50.1 percent for Obama, 49.9 percent for McCain.

Colby College's L. Sandy Maisel, in contrast, argued:

The preponderance of the political science analysis leads to the Abramowitz, Mann, Sabato conclusion that Obama will win this election handily.... In my view, this election is Obama's unless he makes some very serious error--and I doubt that will happen. I cannot see what McCain can do to help his own cause appreciably.
Political scientists are not reluctant to add a little edge to their comments. Maisel, for example, said those who argue the election will be competitive "are grasping at straws." Norpoth, in turn, countered that the "Abramowitz et al. claim is the real myth here."
« Last Edit: July 27, 2008, 06:27:29 pm by Carissa Hoffer-Halliet » Report Spam   Logged

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Carissa Hoffer-Halliet
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« Reply #1 on: July 27, 2008, 06:29:39 pm »

According to this poll, McCain is only up by 3 points, even in Arizona.  Is the media trying to suggest this race is closer than it actually is?

http://www.pollster.com/
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Mandy Esser
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« Reply #2 on: July 28, 2008, 03:12:32 am »

Obama Says He's Becoming Competitive In Red States
DAVID ESPO | July 27, 2008 10:02 PM EST | 



Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., speaks during a forum at the UNITY '08 Convention in Chicago, Sunday, July 27, 2008. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

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CHICAGO — With 100 days remaining in the race for the White House, Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama says he has succeeded in expanding the electoral map in his race against John McCain, principally in southern and southwestern states but also in Montana and North Dakota.

"It doesn't mean we're going to win all those states but at least we're making it a contest and giving voters something to choose from," he said in an interview aboard his campaign jet on the way back from an overseas trip.

"Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia are all states where we are competitive," he said, adding he is going "toe to toe" with his rival in New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada.

Before leaving Europe on Saturday, Obama told reporters he might suffer a small drop in the polls after being out of the country for more than a week. In the AP interview and an appearance on NBC's Meet The Press, he indicated he intends to shift his focus quickly toward the economy and other domestic issues in the coming days.

Depending on actions the current administration and Congress take, he told AP a new economic stimulus package may be his first legislative request from lawmakers if he takes office as the 44th president in January. He has called previously for additional tax rebates and other measures to help revive the economy, and intends to convene a meeting on the subject on Monday in Washington.

With little pause after his trip to two war zones, the Middle East and Europe, Obama resumes campaigning later this week in the swing states with stops in Missouri and Iowa as well as a fundraising visit to Texas.

One month before the Democratic National Convention opens, he declined to say whether he has personally interviewed any potential vice presidential running mates. "I'm not going to discuss it," he said aboard his plane.

On NBC, he expanded in only the most general terms, saying, "I want somebody who I'm compatible with, who I can work with, who has a shared vision, who certainly complements me in the sense that they provide a knowledge base or an area of, of expertise that can be useful...."

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Obama said later Sunday that he was disappointed that McCain has endorsed a ballot initiative in Arizona that would ban preferences based on race and gender in that state.

In the AP interview, Obama sidestepped when asked whether a peace accord is possible in the Middle East before another election is held in Israel, where Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is weakened by a corruption investigation.

"It's hard for me to gauge Israeli politics right now," he said, although he added Olmert had moved forward "in a serious way" with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas since a meeting sponsored by the Bush administration in Annapolis, Maryland.

While in the Middle East last week, Obama met with both men and said both sides struggle with internal political problems, referring to a Fatah-Hamas split among Palestinians and Olmert's situation. "One of the difficulties that we have right now is that in order to make those compromises you have to have strong support from your people. And the Israeli government right now is unsettled," he said at a news conference in Jordan.

Whatever the short-term impact of his trip, Obama told a group of minority journalists at a Unity conference the longer-term impact will be positive.

"In terms of me governing, being an effective president, that that trip was helpful, because I think I've established relationships and a certain bond of trust with key leaders around the world who have taken measure of my positions and how I operate and I think can come away with some confidence that this is somebody I can deal with," he said.

While Obama was overseas, his campaign announced additional staff in key states as the fall campaign approaches.

"So far at least we've been successful in places that nobody guessed would be successful," he said in the AP interview.

"We have a big map that we're playing with. That's no accident. We said at the beginning of this campaign that one of the changes we'd like to make in our politics was breaking out of this red-blue state divide and going to places that maybe no one has gone to for awhile and trying to make the case for change," he added.

Obama holds a narrow lead over McCain nationally in many national polls, but the presidency is won in a series of state-by-state races.

Of the states that Obama mentioned, Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada, Montana and North Dakota all gave their electoral votes, a total of 63, to President Bush both times he ran.

New Mexico, with five electoral votes, voted for Bush in 2004 after supporting Democrat Al Gore in 2000.

A total of 270 electoral votes is needed to win the White House.

Overall, Obama expressed satisfaction with the state of his campaign, citing a trip to five countries in as many days with numerous meetings and public events as evidence of its ability to "manage projects of importance with a lot of effectiveness."

He said a desire for change, coupled with his own presence on the ballot, should lead to a high-turnout election.

Obama also noted that attacks by Republicans and their allies in congressional elections in Louisiana and Mississippi in recent months had failed to sway the outcome.

"Obviously those sort of attacks by association are going to be especially ineffective when directed at congressional candidates who don't know me very well," he said. Democrats won both races, in part because of heavy black turnout, picking up seats that had long been in Republican hands.

Asked if be thought those two races mean that Republicans must find a new strategy to defeat him, he said, as he has numerous times, that he expects Republicans to target him this fall "full bore with their usual assortment of negative attacks...I don't think anybody's got any illusion about that," he said.

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Tom Hebert
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« Reply #3 on: July 28, 2008, 04:07:50 am »

Based on the results of Obama's recent tour, the rest of the world already knows who's going to be our next President.   Wink
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