McCain's Last Possible Path to Victory

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/stumper/archive/2008/11/04/how-mccain-could-win.aspx

Posted Tuesday, November 04, 2008 5:05 PM

McCain's Last Possible Path to Victory

Andrew Romano

The final round of state and national polling is in. It shows Barack Obama widening his http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/us/general_election_mccain_vs_obama-225.html">average overall lead to 7.6 percent--a 2.5-percent increase from two weeks ago--and topping 52 percent nationwide. In the Electoral College, Obama is ahead by more than five points (again, on average) in http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/maps/obama_vs_mccain/#data">enough states to reach 278 electoral votes; include the states where he leads by less--Florida, Virginia and Ohio--and that tally http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/maps/obama_vs_mccain/?map=10">expands to 338. One hundred and eleven national polls have been taken since mid-September--and John McCain hasn't led in a single one of them. The prediction whizzes at FiveThirtyEight--who base their projections on polls--give the Arizona senator a http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/11/todays-polls-and-final-election.html">1.1 percent chance of victory?

But despite these statistical storm clouds, McCainiacs are still insisting that their man could win. Part of this, of course, is pure, unadulterated spin; no campaign admits it's going to lose before the polls close on Election Day. But there's also a glimmer of truth beneath the BS. The question for campaign reporters like me--and anxious voters of all political stripes--is whether there's enough reality here to actually upend the contest.

Basically, the McCain camp has been forced in the final days of this race to argue that everything we think we know--thanks, for the most part, to the incessant flood of polls--is wrong. In a http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/10/28/in-memo-mccains-top-pollster-sees-tighter-race/">memo released to reporters late last week, campaign pollster Bill McInturff--a reliable, no-nonsense guy--presented two poll-based pathways to a McCain victory. The first relied on undecideds. In this scenario, the vast majority of voters who persisted in telling pollsters until the last possible minute that they weren't sure which candidate they'd select on Election Day would, in the end, break overwhelmingly for McCain, propelling him past Obama and into the White House. "Given their demographics"--older, whiter, poorer Republicans, according to McInturff--"it is my sense these voters WILL vote in this election and WILL break decisively in our direction," he wrote. As a result, McCain's support would skyrocket--and Obama's would hold steady. Not particularly complicated.

McInturff's second pro-McCain scenario is a little craftier. That's because it relies not on voters who refused to commit but on those who "refused to even respond." As Pollster's Mark Blumenthal recently http://www.nationaljournal.com/njonline/mp_20081103_3613.php">reported, "even the most rigorous national surveys struggle to achieve response rates over 30 percent"; the other 70 percent, meanwhile, hung up without participating. The question McInturff raised in his memo was, What if those who refused to be interviewed have very different political views----read: views far less favorable to Obama--than those who agreed to participate? He had reason to suspect that the answer was yes. In 1997, the Pew Research Center conducted an http://people-press.org/report/89/possible-consequences-of-non-response-for-pre-election-surveys">experiment that found "reluctant respondents significantly less sympathetic than amenable respondents toward African-Americans." Without these hard-to-reach anti-Obamans in the respondent poll, McInturff's thinking went, our national surveys would naturally skew toward the Democrat. But if they show up on Election Day, McCain would get a big--and potentially decisive--boost

…

[corkhead]

1. last possible path... one word. Peyote

[machI]

2. Second last possible path... one word. DieBold