Presidential election minus two days

587 thoughts on “Presidential election minus two days”

1. Unions=BOO

2. How would you know?
   The media never ran it all out and most media outlets dropped the story and let Obama off the hook. If it was a white inexperienced Senator who listened to a pastor saying how bad black people are he’d be destroyed…but not Obama noooo!

3. Juliem,

   A bit more thought and one more change. My guess for the CNN tipping point state is California. I’m guessing it will be called soon after closing whereas nevada, new mexico and colorardo (which have a head start) will take some time to call.

   I’m also tipping McCain for a graceful concession speech and Palin for a dummy spit.

4. Saw a former Republican Secretary of State on Fox last night crying in his beer over the pending Obama win.

   According to him, Obama is a con man buying his way into power with all this money and we don’t even know where it’s coming from (the implication being that it’s probably coming from some shady outfit, rather than millions of ordinary citizens who have just had a gut full of Bush and his neocons).

   He then went on to say that if Obama can’t buy it, he’s going to steal it through the activites of this evil mob ACORN.

   Talk about sour grapes. He’s got all his pathetic excuses ready. Don’t you just love it. Australia Nov 07 re-visited.

5. “the narrowing”

   Just like “the narrowing” before the last Oz election, eh Glen?

6. Here’s my prediction, which I think errs on the side of caution:

   Obama to take IA, NM, VA, OH, FL, CO & NV, with North Carolina falling to McCain by a bee’s dick and possibly taking several days/weeks to finalise. Obama won’t get Missouri, Georgia, Indiana or Montana.

   That gives us Obama 338, McCain 200. I think, if anything else, the Obama numbers could be higher, if he manages to snatch any of the above, with NC being most likely. I think the only way Obama could get less than the above number is if dodgy voting systems plague us again. That’s hard to predict, but a definite possibility.

7. I have said Obama is the favourite and most likely winner tomorrow, get off my back already!

8. Adam,

   All you say about Joe the Plumber may be true. However, why has this small time nobody had his life dissected by the ravaging hordes of the press and blogospehere simply because he asked a question of Obama that he could not answer?

   Bulldusting is not a crime, it’s a pass time as many here on PB can attest.

   The vendetta against Joe by the Obama luvvies is not a pretty sight and raises serious questions about how dissent and thought crimes will be dealt with by the new administration.

9. It was McCain who chose to put Sam Wurzelmangle or whatever his name is before the public as a symbol of his policies. As with Palin, the Repubs failed to check the guy’s bona fides first. You can’t blame the Dems and the liberal media for going after him, just as the conservative media have gone after Ayers and Wright.

   Patrick, there WAS a narrowing in 2007, OK? Learn your history before you start sniping.

10. Adam

    Wasn’t the narrowing in 2007 mainly in the ballot box? The polls tightened only a little, as in the US but the final result was “narrower” than the polls indicated.

11. “Joe are you there?, Joe I know your there, Joe are you there ?Joe,Is joe the plumber here?, joe where are you?Oh well we’re all joe the plumber….”

    these will go down as THE lines of the campaign.”

    btw where the hell is joe anyway ffs?

12. Adam,

    Obama couldn’t handle the direct question and that is why Joe has been crucified. He caught Obama unprepared. If Obama with his Law Scool education and vast amount of experience can be done over by a question from a local yokel, then it raises questions about Obama’s ability to deal with events as they unfold.

13. The Narrowing:
    http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/a/australia/polls.shtml

14. GG, the presidency is not a quiz show.

15. Newspoll, Morgan and Galaxy all produced their closest polls of the year immediately before the election.

16. Yes, and they all showed a late swing back to the Libs, aka The Narrowing.

17. Well they produced a poll closest to the result immediately before the election. There’s no way of testing the accuracy of a poll unless there is an election and you can’t completely discount that there was a real change in voting preference between the penultimate and final polls.

18. Adam

    In an otherwise excellent summary of the 2007 election on your site, I found a particularly egregious error which besmirches an otherwise brilliantly perceptive and accurate article. At one point you say;

    In drawing attention to the incorrect predictions of others, I do not claim omniscience for myself.

19. Adam,

    Indeed it is not. However, for me, the reaction to Joe the Plumber is why I worry more about the thinness of Obama’s skin rather than its colour.

20. I try to be modest about these things, Diogenes.

21. Indeed it is not. However, for me, the reaction to Joe the Plumber is why I worry more about the thinness of Obama’s skin rather than its colour.

    Why aren’t people allowed to call Joe the Liar a plumber? I mean Joe the Plumber a liar?

    He lies. Isn’t that an open and shut case?

22. The anti Obama brigade are becoming a bit testy here. I can understand it I suppose. Afterall if it was Hilliary running ……

23. GG, as I think you will recall, Obama was not my first choice this year. I still think Clinton would be vying for Utah and Wyoming at this point in the campaign, although this of course can’t be proved. But my opinion Obama has gone up substantially. Far from being thin-skinned, he has proved cool under pressure, has hardly put a foot wrong (since the Berlin rally, anyway), and has outsmarted the Repub attack machine at every turn. His address the other night was much more substantial and convincing than his earlier windy speeches. I still don’t have as much confidence that he will be a good president than I would have had about Gore or Clinton, but I have much more than I had two months ago.

24. I think that’s exactly what happened, LTEP, and that’s my understanding of what was meant by a “narrowing”: that a number of former Liberal voters who had toyed with switching decided to favour the devil they knew when the crunch came. That Dennis Shanahan was – God forbid! – partly right.

25. Informed sources reckon that the “narrowing” started on Tuesday night, peaked on Wednesday, drifted on Thursday before a small late movement back to the ALP on the Friday for a total movement of two points, of which about a points worth came from undecideds breaking to incumbency and another points worth came from what the dreaded “soft Labor vote”.

26. “That Dennis Shanahan was – God forbid! – partly right.”
    William wash your mouth out with soap now!

    dennis is never wrong -just misunderstood 🙁

27. Particularly in Kooyong.

28. Actually, for anyone who hasn’t read it Adam’s Post-mortem of the Oz election really is superb. It even includes the infamous Adam v Possum cage match, with GG as Possum’s trainer. GG, I’m amazed you criticised Adam for dissing Possum’s numbers given your reticence about reducing elections to mathematical contests.

    http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/a/australia/commentary6.shtml

29. The anti Obama brigade are becoming a bit testy here. I can understand it I suppose. Afterall if it was Hilliary running ……

    Hillary would’ve already won. The election would’ve been brought forward to Monday.

30. with GG as Possum’s trainer

    And Ron as Adam’s trainer?

31. Noting what happened last November here, surely at this point nobody thinks any “narrowing” in the US will be enought to change the POTUS result? Obama is +7 to +9 points ahead. Even a 2 point “narrowing” still leaves him with a clear margin.

    Is there any US polling past history on whether poll narrowing in the run up to US elections is the same if the president is not standing for reelection? It would seem to me that if the predecessor had been adequate there might be some incumbency advantage if they ran again or the VP ran to take over, as with Bush Snr and Gore. In this case I see no such advantage.

32. As I said some ways back, I think there will be a narrowing, but I doubt it will be enough to stop Obama winning IA, NM, CO, VA and NV, and thus the election. I don’t think he will win MO or NC. I am agnostic on OH and FL.

33. ShowsOn,

    Read the thread more carefully. The issue is not Joe, but the over reaching persecution and vilification of an ordinary man because he caught the “anointed” one off guard and embarassed him in front of the nation.

    No one is allowed to to that are they?

34. Socrates

    If you look at William’s previous blog, there has been a “narrowing” in each of the last four elections. Can’t comment about incumbency from that though.

    http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/2008/10/26/presidential-election-minus-10-days/

35. GG, Wurzelfurzle was not persecuted or vilified. He was correctly exposed as a liar who falsely claimed that he would be worse off under Obama’s tax plan. What on earth do you expect the Dems and the media to do? Give him a free pass? You think Fox News or the WSJ would have given him a free pass if he had been a Dem?

36. In kind of weird, sad and happy news, Obama’s grandmother voted absentee and her vote will be counted tomorrow despite her death. 😐

37. Joe/Sam the plumber is indeed an ordinary man, just one of the people that you meet, when your walking down the street each day. He certainly wasn’t a political prop:

    http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/colbert-report-mccain-campaign-reaches-out

38. Read the thread more carefully. The issue is not Joe, but the over reaching persecution and vilification of an ordinary man because he caught the “anointed” one off guard and embarassed him in front of the nation.

    Get GGed, read my posts more carefully. I couldn’t careless how you are trying to defend Joe the Liar. He expressed the lie that Obama would stop the U.S. from being an ally of Israel, and was called out on it on Fox News!

    No one is allowed to to that are they?

    WTF are you going on about? Why can’t people criticise Joe the Liar? He is now a member of the McCain campaign. If you start making public comments, then you are open to public criticism.

39. Diogenes,

    Old stoushes and fierce arguments is what political discourse is all about. No babies got hurt. But, a few egos (including mine) were dented. So, all in all, a good result and fun was had by all.

40. Nick,

    I ummed and erred about North Carolina too. In the end, I decided the high level of early voters linked with the above average proportion of black voters potentually means a higher overall turnout of black voters. There been a fair bit of anecdoate evidence (for what it’s worth) of this over the last couple of weeks. If true, it should be enough for obama to hold his narrow advantage in NC

41. A warning note for tomorrow. The pre-polling in this election has been higher than ever before, over 30% in some states. Since these voters have been disproportionately enthusiastic Democrats, that means that the exit polls tomorrow morning will be skewed in favour of McCain.

42. Looking at the humorous side, has everyone seen the latest SNL clip of Sarah Fey – Palin with “Hillary”? ROTFL as they say in Athens.

    Previously I had never been much of a fan of Will Ferrill but his impersonation of Bush giving McCain an endorsement was also very good.

43. The Palin/Clinton press conference sketch was my favourite by far.

44. A warning note for tomorrow. The pre-polling in this election has been higher than ever before, over 30% in some states. Since these voters have been disproportionately enthusiastic Democrats, that means that the exit polls tomorrow morning will be skewed in favour of McCain.

    But since the exit polls are done in person, that will cancel out the mobile phone only factor. So things may just even out.

45. ShowsOn,

    You are very predicatable. You are all dribbling derivative. No original idea would ever infest one of your posts.

46. According to Princeton, even with an overnight 2% swing to McCain, Obama still gets to 278 SOLID votes, with Florida in doubt:
    http://election.princeton.edu/2008/11/03/mac-finishing-strong/

    I think more likely most of the polls have been undervaluing Obama’s vote by 1 – 2 due to lack of mobile phones.

47. socrates
    http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/33f2687080/good-cop-baby-cop-from-will-ferrell-and-adam-ghost-panther-mckay?PHPSESSID=d829f662273c874dd9261bd4d82bc5e8

48. Adam, i would say exit polls will put Obama way ahead, just as they put Kerry ahead by 5 points…exit polls generally trend towards inflating the Democrat vote. I suspect they will be all bad news for McCain.

    I still think i could of stomached Clinton winning, if only she would be President on Wednesday and not Barack.

49. The ‘mobile phone only’ angle is not believable.

50. You are very predicatable. You are all dribbling derivative. No original idea would ever infest one of your posts.

    Oh so sorry, I didn’t realise my job is to entertain you. I’ll commence making you feel happier about life ASAP!