The Home Stretch

It seems that the race has tightened a noticeable amount in the past few days, according to RCP, Pollster.com and fiverthrityeight.com. I'm not going to get into specifics about the methodology of each analysis because it appears that whatever the true numbers are, we really have witnessed what seems to be a several point gain by McCain that appears to be tapering off a bit.

We can usually attribute this to an almost inevitable tightening in polls in the last few days of an election. The only (semi)troubling aspect about this for me is if this is the case, then it shows a high level of undecideds breaking for McCain.

Conventional wisdom is that in the last few days of the election, undecided will typical break to the challenger by a ratio of about 60 to 40 percent. This is usually attributable to the fact that somebody who was undecided is probably less inclined to favor the incumbent. The best example would be somebody asking you if you wanted to be with your girlfriend or boyfriend a year from now. If your answer at any point is undecided, then you're probably a bit unsatisfied. Likewise, if you're undecided about your current leadership, you probably think somebody could do a better job.

This race of course doesn't have an incumbent individual, but it does have an incumbent party, and most numbers seem to indicate that people are issuing a collective punishment on the GOP. This would normally lead somebody to conclude that most undecideds should break towards Obama - but I actually think the opposite.

Obama has been riding a wave of positive press for several straight weeks, while McCain has suffered setback after setback. Poll numbers showing a massive swing towards Obama and downballot Dems indicate to me that a general consensus has emerged among most people. I think Obama plateaued about a week ago, with everybody who could be convinced, being convinced. Still being on the fence after such a lopsided level of press coverage would lead me to believe that very little could persuade that person to vote for Obama. (I realize this could be my partisan opinions coming out)

I'm assuming the tightening in the polls is due to undecideds, but that in itself is just speculation. I don't have access to poll crosstabs (or time to analyze them) so I can't tell if that number has shrunk in the past week. I mostly want to attribute it to that because I can't think of any other event that would cause a shift in opinion. Have McCain's "spread the wealth" attacks really been that effective? We really can't tell, but it doesn't seem like a winning line to me.

Overall this doesn't worry me a great deal. The overall numbers still make things look pretty difficult for a McCain victory. Both candidates are drawing the same level of support from their party, but Dem party id is far higher than Republicans this year. A McCain path to victory would require him siphoning of a solid majority of independents, a group he is trailing badly with. (Independents aren't the same as undecideds) There's also the fact that despite the national numbers getting closer, McCain seems to have been making very little headway in the key battleground states. Obama's superior ground operations coupled with his cash on hand advantage seem to be keeping the eight or so important states immune to slight national fluctuations.

I think the most important thing to look for these next few days will be if the trendline continues or flattens out (as it appears it is). If we don't see any difference in the battleground states it will also be a mute point. So despite whatever outlying Zogby poll that Fox or Matt Drudge try to pull out, I think this race is still pretty out of reach for McCain.