fkusumot said:
I think people like electoral-vote.com because it has a bigger map that's easier to understand. I added pollster.com to the OP. It looks nice. I'll have to check it out more closely. The $700BB hasn't passed yet. I expect it will and then the people in the House races will have to explain why they voted for it. The best the market can do now is stay in a range. It will probably go down and find it's new stable level. I'll just guess around 9500. If the market is below 10k on Nov. 4th I expect Obama to win. If it's above then it might be a real contest. Any economic news coming out at the end of this month is probably going to have effect. Right now the EC map is looking crazy strong for Obama. It's looking more like Mondale vs. Reagan, McGovern vs. Nixon or Dole vs. Clinton. But all of those races were against popular incumbents. Basically the challengers were just sent out to die, and to help in the Senate and House races. I've never followed a race by the EC map before until it was the last week of the campaign so this is very interesting. |
It's called the Bradley Effect - or the newer version, the Harold Ford effect. It's painfully real, even among diehard supporters.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_effect
The term Bradley effect, less commonly called[1] the Wilder effect, refers to a frequently observed discrepancy between voter opinion polls and election outcomes in American political campaigns when a white candidate and a non-white[2][3][4] Named for Tom Bradley, an African-American who lost the 1982 California governor's race despite being ahead in voter polls, the Bradley effect refers to a tendency on the part of voters -- black as well as white -- to tell pollsters that they are undecided or likely to vote for a Black candidate, when, on election day, they vote for his/her white opponent.[5] candidate run against each other.
It happened with Harold Ford in 2006. A young and upcoming Dem in Tenn., his dad made history and he was soaring in the polls. However, near the end of the campaign, an ad that sunk him.
Folks will look for any excuse besides race. And yes, you are correct, Fksumot. He needs a huge spread to beat McCain so he can suffer that kind of loss.
What's really sad is - the GOP will do whatever it takes for voter suppression, caging and the like to win.
The above ad proves my point.
Associate - white woman/black man and folks will go the other way.
True story - a staffer was all about Obama and said he'd vote for him. When he went into the primary booth, he nearly voted for John Edwards, who at the time was out of the race. He said 'I couldn't vote for Obama - I know what I get with Edwards,' but then he snapped back and voted for Obama. He's a rare case - most folks would have voted for a candidate not even running.
I think the younger generation is a lot more comfortable with voting for a black man than the Baby Boomers and beyond.
