Surge in support for Obama

Interesting that the American media won't say the obvious -- that this race is no longer a race and will almost certainly be a landslide -- but the Financial Times will say it (on the front cover today):

Barack Obama is heading for a landslide victory over John McCain in 12 days’ time if his double-digit poll leads prove accurate and sustained, says a growing consensus of Democratic and Republican political forecasters. No candidate with this big a lead at this late stage of a presidential election has yet gone on to lose.

On Wednesday, a Reuters/Zogby poll gave Mr Obama 51.6 per cent against 42 per cent for Mr McCain – in line with polls this week that have given Mr Obama a lead of between 6 and 14 points.

Even Republican analysts were on Wednesday pessimistic about Mr McCain’s chances of turning the race around. “To have any optimism about McCain then you have to cast some doubt on the methodology of the pollsters,” said Vin Weber, a leading Republican forecaster. “I am not foolishly optimistic about this. If I had to predict a result it would be an Obama victory – possibly a big victory.”

Analysts were on Wednesday predicting that Mr Obama could get more than 350 electoral votes, well in excess of the 270 required to win the White House and in line with the tallies Bill Clinton secured in 1992 and 1996.

In addition, they pointed to a surge of early voting in swing states such as Florida and Ohio, which would help insulate Mr Obama from any tightening in the polls in the final few days. Things look even worse for Mr McCain in the main battleground states, with Mr Obama clearly ahead in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Colorado, Virginia, Florida, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Of the big states, only Ohio, where the two are running a close race, looks like a potential catch for Mr McCain...

“Even if those who tell pollsters they are still undecided suddenly broke two-to-one in favour of John McCain, Obama would still win a clear victory with poll leads as high as this,” said Mark Penn, who was Hillary Clinton’s chief strategist for her primary campaign.

“This race increasingly resembles Clinton versus Bob Dole in 1996, with McCain looking out of touch and incompetent to deal with the economic crisis facing America.”

Tom Schaller, a political scientist at the University of Maryland said: “There aren’t any examples of a candidate coming back this late in the game with a deficit this big.

“The only potential straw for McCain to clutch on to is that this race is unprecedented in many respects and that the man in the lead is black.”

The Obama campaign knows the race is over -- it's now looking for a mandate.  That's why Obama isn't spending a single day between now and election day in a state Kerry won -- he's going for Indiana, North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, etc.

 

Let's not get cocky/giddy, however!  Obama needs a mandate (and big majorities in Congress) to quickly undo the damage wrought over the past eight years.  In particular, we want to win 60 seats in the Senate -- only a 32% probability, according to fivethirtyeight.com -- so let's fight to the very end!

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Surge in support for Obama

By Edward Luce, Andrew Ward and Daniel Dombey in Washington

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/99b71a34-a063-11dd-80a0-000077b07658,dwp_uuid=729ab242-9cb1-11db-8ec6-0000779e2340.html

Published: October 22 2008 20:12 | Last updated: October 22 2008 20:12

Barack Obama is heading for a landslide victory over John McCain in 12 days’ time if his double-digit poll leads prove accurate and sustained, says a growing consensus of Democratic and Republican political forecasters. No candidate with this big a lead at this late stage of a presidential election has yet gone on to lose.

On Wednesday, a Reuters/Zogby poll gave Mr Obama 51.6 per cent against 42 per cent for Mr McCain – in line with polls this week that have given Mr Obama a lead of between 6 and 14 points.