The Ayers Attacks Seem To Be Working In The Polls

[slinkerwink]

In the 5 daily trackers out so far today (with Gallup still to go), McCain gained 3 points in Battleground, 2 points in Rasmussen, and 1 point each in Kos, Zogby, and Hotline. The trackers were all pre-debate.

We'll see if Obama picks up in the polls today and tomorrow after the debate.

[Arrowhead2k1]

1. Not unexpected. Let's hope the losses are mininal. It shouldn't stick for long.

[slinkerwink]

6. Palin was at it again on the Ayers attack in her morning rally

but she wasn't covered. However, later when McCain holds two joint rallies with her, it'll get cable coverage.

[TwilightGardener]

2. I imagine they'll wring a few points out of it, and when it stops working, they'll

trot out the good Reverend for another few points, and so on and so forth. But I don't think it's enough to put them ahead.

[slinkerwink]

3. It might in the battleground states. They just need to keep it close.

[TwilightGardener]

29. Well, we'll see. I think we've reached saturation point with Ayers--

there's just not much more they can squeeze out of it, after insinuating that Obama was a terrorist sympathizer--where do you go from there? Undecideds (low-info's) who weren't paying attention last spring when the Ayers bullshit came up, or in Aug-Sept (because that's when McStupid started bringing it up in ads) are finally just paying attention to this crap now, which shaves a few points off, but unless we see big shifts rather than small dips in state polls, Obama will weather the storm. Not sure about Wright--that got wall to wall coverage, more people have seen and heard that stuff already, so not sure how the low-info's will react when it's trotted out again. I imagine Obama will keep some negative shit on McStupid handy in the pantry, ready to go (like he did with Keating 5) if his numbers decline enough, also.

[tekisui]

4. It will be a dip, at worst.

Down a day or two, then back up.

[leftofcool]

5. Ayers Shaymers! He is a non issue. I am more worried about

voter fraud. Ayers can't hurt in the long run but fraud can, especially if it is coming from our side of the aisle.

[slinkerwink]

7. uh, there is no voter fraud from our side.

[leftofcool]

9. That is not what the Democratic Sec of State in Nevada is

saying and it is not what the FBI is saying

[Cid_B]

13. Speaking of that...

Is there any more word on the Vegas ACORN voter falsification raids?

[John Q. Citizen]

17. can you give me an example of voter fraud? It's almost non-existant.

[frogcycle]

32. voter fraud is nothing

election fraud is the worry

voter fraud is one-at-a-time people voting when they aren't entitled to

election fraud is suppressing large numbers of votes, or faking the count, etc.

[bullwinkle428]

46. Stop buying into the bullshit wingnut talking points about "voter fraud"!

Learn more about the subject by reading stuff from Greg Palast, BradBlog, RFK Jr., Mark Crispin Miller, etc.

[treestar]

There's always some up and down in the polls

The Ayers attack is too ridiculous to "work."

[slinkerwink]

11. it IS working though.

[alcibiades_mystery]

16. So you say

...

[treestar]

38. This is not within the margin of error

And even if it were, there is no way to know why.

[regnaD kciN]

8. I'll respond the way I did when you brought this up in a different thread...

If it is "working," it appears to be so for about 2% of voters at most.

Will they be enough to sway a sufficient number more to catch up entirely? Possible, but not likely. Keep in mind, too, that these attacks were being staged while Obama was prepping for debates, and Biden was off the campaign trail due to a death in the family. In other words, for those three days, the Republicans had the stage to themselves, and could make whatever charges they wanted without being contradicted. That's something unlikely to happen again this campaign.

And, starting tomorrow, we'll see how the debate affected respondents. If Obama continues to drop over the next few days despite the debate, then I'll start to worry. But not in these circumstances.

[slinkerwink]

15. that's a good assessment. I'm looking forward to tomorrow's polls.

It might show an upward tick for Obama by one or two points tomorrow, but if McCain and Palin continue with their WAR strategy, it might tighten again after that.

[regnaD kciN]

26. Tomorrow will be the START of gauging the debate results...

...but they'll make up no more than 1/3 of the total. To really judge the debate's effectiveness, you'll need to wait until Saturday's results, when all the data will be post-debate.

[melody]

33. Looking forward to them, hoping to see Obama drop farther?

I'd give up that hope -- the hate vote will work some but it's Obama's election to lose, whether the GOP likes it or not.

[slinkerwink]

37. Uh, no. I want Obama to gain tomorrow.

[brianna69]

43. Do you do anything but panic daily?

[slinkerwink]

49. Uh. And how does that address my post about how a line of attack

seems to be working in the polls? I'm pretty sure the Obama campaign is working to keep their lead open at this point now and to rebut the Ayers attacks.

[Lasher]

28. Things will get even better.

Near term, watch for McStupid to take a beating with his party faithful over his announcement that he would spend another $300 billion paying off peoples' mortgages. And I just can't wait to see Obama and Biden put the word out there about McLoser's plans for massive cuts to Medicare and Medicaid.

[Schulzz]

10. I'm sure we will have these points back in 3 days (after debate). nt

[MoJoWorkin]

12. Get a grip. No more hand wringing for me. State by state is where you need to focus.

Hotline is increasing R's in their sample, Zogby is crap, and one or two points fluctuation is nothing. Geez. If you look at Gallup, Obama tends to go down during early week, so I won't be surprised if he goes down there a bit either.

[slinkerwink]

18. It's important to keep our eyes on the GOTV effort but polls do count

as well.

[AzNick]

14. I told you so: 1% will switch... max

1% to switch = 2% difference.

And when that settles in, thanks to a great debate performance from Obama last night, numbers will be back up.

That Ayers crap will show up again and again until people are tired of it.

Expect it to make a small come back in 2012.

[olkaz]

19. I don't want to sound alarmist (I'm not), but this is bad news.

The McCain campaign is going to throw the kitchen sink now that they've seen a net positive here. Yes, they would have anyway, but this is definitely going to throw gas on the fire.

It is fortuitous that they are going to have to do this further from the actual election than they had planned.

[slinkerwink]

25. yeah. However, they've been negative constantly from the start.

The public has a very short memory when it comes to lines of attacks from the primary season.

[bullwinkle428]

47. But the pathetic old coward didn't even have the guts to confront

Obama with this stuff face-to-face last night! How does he expect the American people to think he has what it takes to deal with world leaders and terrorists when he can't address his political opponents directly?

[phleshdef]

20. I don't think Ayers has anything to do with it...

...its a normal fluctuation.

[Essene]

30. Agreed. It's an expectations game. It's more about Palin/Mcccain "attacking" than Obama losing.

The bottom of Mccain's polling reflects less on Obama than on Mccain.

If/when Obama starts to lose 3-5 points in all the polls... we oughta start being nervous about why.

[BlooInBloo]

21. OMGWEREDOOMED!!!!!

[slinkerwink]

27. I'm not saying that we are, but we can't dismiss the overall trend

and say the Ayers attacks don't work.

[Teaser]

54. come back when you show me some real stats

All you've done is show me a correlative in three polls.

Show some causation, or I laugh at you.

[Meshuga]

22. What makes you think it is Ayers? Polls fluctuate. 1-3 points changes are meaningless. n/t

[goddess40]

23. go to this site, they seem to have the best compilation of the polls

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/

[Jersey Devil]

24. Tightening a bit but we really don't know the reason

It always tightens in the last few weeks before a presidential election. I distinctly remember Bill Clinton saying it would tighten before the drubbing he gave to Bob Dole in 96 after going into October with large leads in the polls and it did tighten just as he said.

The reason is that near the end of an election cycle a lot of voters "go home" and though they have not been able to make up their minds they return to what they believe has always been "safe" for them.

This time, however, we have large leads in new voter registrations and GOTV efforts that have never been matched before and probably these new voters are not included in LV polls since their names are not even on some voter lists yet. Those votes will boost the numbers back up again for Obama on election day.

[regnaD kciN]

35. I believe 538.com made the same point...

Nate said, sometime over the weekend, that he suspected the numbers we were seeing for Obama were the "ceiling" for him, and it was likely they'd tighten a bit hereafter. This was before the big concentration on washed-up '60s revolutionaries, and what an 8-year-old boy in Hawaii should or should not have known about him. In other words, this may well have happened anyway.

[Jersey Devil]

39. Yes, and if McCain is really going to stop the Ayers crap

as reported on TPM and in some strings here then it must be that his internal polls are telling him it isn't working. Otherwise, why would he stop?

I think the timing of last night's debate was good for Obama because once those numbers start getting entered into the polls he may go up again and maybe even higher than before, but no matter what, as pointed out by Clinton in 96, the closer we get to election day the closer the polls will get due to people going "home".

[Cosmocat]

51. That is my take - Ayers is static ...

I think people here get a bit guilty of thinking that BO will just keep gaining and gaining.

IMO, him breaking to that 50-51 mark probably was his ceiling. A HIGHLY divided base electorate, where at least 40% are going to vote R if the D was Jesus himself and the R was Benedict Arnold, BO being african american, the MSM at best constantly trying to make it a horserace/truthfully playing against the D and for the R.

A LOT working against BO here, and as much as people want to breathe the sigh of relief of a blowout, I think it will cut back in some way shape or form.

[Essene]

31. Mccain bouncing up is not the same as Obama sinking down. Relax.

[Bleacher Creature]

56. Exactly. Attacks are designed to bring the other person's numbers down.

[mwb970]

34. The McCain camp may be dropping Ayers and Wright, per TPM.

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/10/mccain_advisers_taking_ayers_w.php

[slinkerwink]

36. Not true. Palin just attacked Obama this morning on Ayers.

[Jersey Devil]

41. Umm, I thought that press interview was on her plane last night

Maybe she didn't get the memo yet. Or, more interestingly, maybe she has decided to ignore McGrumpy and fly on her own.

[TwilightGardener]

45. No, she'll keep on being the parrot for the ugly spewage. That's all

she's good for now, because nobody takes her seriously on policy matters--her credibility is gone, we all know she's an airhead, and whatever she has to say on the issues is pretty much discarded. But what she CAN do is sling shit at Obama and hope it sticks. You don't need knowledge or gravitas to fling poo--all you need is obsessive media attention to report the attacks, and she's got that.

[elkston]

40. You have an odd sort of "glee" about reporting these results

Like you are happy to tie the slight dip in polls to their negative attacks.

[brianna69]

44. She is always in full panic mode

It is the last thing we need right now.

[Born_A_Truman]

50. I noticed that as well

[brianna69]

42. Oh please

We have movement of 1 or 2 points in the daily polls and suddenly the attacks are working and the sky is falling. Obama is over 50% in most tracking polls and kicking ass in the state polls which is actually what will decide this election. Did you think Obama's numbers would just increase everyday. There will be fluctuations daily up and down and getting closer to Nov 4 the polls WILL tighten as they do for every election. This constant panic everytime a daily poll ticks up or down a point is ridiculous. The daily panic that infests Dkos seems to be here now as well. The constant panic and hand wringing is beyond ridiculous at this point. It is like people look for a reason to get down. Our candidate just kicked butt and won every poll for a debate yesterday, he is leading by margins of over 8 points in all the states won by Kerry and also leading in other key battleground states not won by a democratic for sometime and some people still must do the panic and sky is falling routine. Please knock it off. Now is not the time for panic, just keep working and we will win.

[FloridaGrl]

48. Oh brother

Polls will move up and down. It does not mean the dirty smears are working. Republicans are realigning with their party after Sarah showed up in the debate.

[rockymountaindem]

52. Is anybody even talking about that?

Hasn't it been drowned out by the economic situation? Does anybody care about Ayers when their 401k is dropping 25% in a month?

[FrenchieCat]

53. Zogby came out showing only a 2 point lead for Obama not just yesterday,

but the day before as well. It is an outlier that was generated specifically to bring down Obama's poll average. That and the CBS poll showing Obama 4 points ahead are the two polls reducing Obama's average.

One of the reason that I don't follow polls, as we were advised by the Obama campaign, is exactly because poll results can be ordered and used accordingly to sway public opinion of those who are not informed on poll methodology or a particular firm's reputation on accuracy.

My understanding is we are not to pay much mind to national polling......

So that's what I'm going to do.

But of course, considering how much coverage Palin's ugly comments got, and how little coverage the Keating 5 got, the polls would drop. It is after all our media that we know are interested in keeping McCain in this thing. Why would they have attempted to call yesterday's debate almost a tie? Why would they continue to say that Barack Obama has no specifics.

These polls are supposed to sway the uninformed folks out there.....I just didn't realize that they were suppose to sway us as well.

I've been busy writing letters expressing the above sentiments to various media outlets.

At the end of my letter, I state.....Not this time. I suggest that more of us do the same.

[MoJoWorkin]

55. Today's Gallup, need I say more?