Timmah, would do but he's actually quite level headed and intelligent, as is Rocketpig (And I'm not sure pig is conservative, or if he just likes McCain). Really this is more of a bigjon or Mr. Bubbles situation. Somebody to make outlandish claims, make comparisons to hitler, and really spin things. Where are they?

I know that not all of the conservative posters are random. A lot of them are actually really intelligent, but they post less and don't stand out as much. And I always thought MrBubbles was joking...

I'm not so sure you can say that Obama is almost certain to win at the moment ... at the moment, the margin of error of most polls still has John McCain winning and (as it has been pointed out many times) there are reasons to believe that Obama may suffer worse from people saying they will vote for him (in polls) and then voting for his opponent than McCain will.

Right now I would say that it is more likely that Obama would win if the vote was tomorow but, with a month left and only really having to get 1% to 2% of voters in a couple of battleground states to switch their vote, McCain could still win this election.

I have to wonder where that logic was when McCain was leading in dozens of polls. Are people scared of being judged by a random pollster? If someone asks you who you'd vote for over the phone and you respond with a candidate they don't like, will they track you down and kill you? I'm not entirely sure of how these polls are conducted, so I wouldn't know. As for the battleground states, McCain would have to win nearly all of them to beat Obama in electoral votes. I'm sure McCain "could" win the election, just like I said it was "almost" certain. It would be pretty difficult for him at this point.

McCain needs both Ohio and Florida to win, but is behind in both. Obama doesn't need either of them, but is leading in both.

I really don't see a scenario in which McCain wins. Unless they have body transplants and Obama dies of old age next week.

I really don't know what the deep psychological reasoning that professionals would give you ...

Human beings are hardwired for social interaction, and it has been demonstrated that the same portion of your brain that responds to physical pain responds to social rejection. Most people will have faced social rejection a similar number of times as they have faced physical pain, and they would (probably) have produced defence mechanisms to protect them from being rejected. If an individual fears that there is a possibility of being rejected by the pollster if they said "I plan to vote for McCain" their defence mechanism may kick in and they might respond "I'm voting for Obama" or "I haven't decided yet".

@Happy. That is the stupidest thing I have heard. A more reasonable argument would be the people who say they will vote for Obama won't vote at all because they are younger and us young 'uns are lazy little buggers.

Hmm, I guess it's pretty subtle then. This could be equally true of Obama supporters, though. If you're an Obama supporter in a big red state (Texas for example) you would probably be ashamed to admit it, even to a pollster. But the only real way there would be more people that would be scared of saying McCain is if Obama was more popular in the first place.

Except that the pattern of a visable minority candidate's support being far below their polling numbers has been noticed in several countries around the world in several elections ... In other words, it is not isolated to Obama. Because most elections are (really) not that close, it hasn't decided the outcome of too many elections; but in an election this close if 5% of Obama supporters voted for McCain this would certainly give McCain a very solid victory.

At the moment, the thing I think is hurting McCain the most is the collapse of the credit markets and the $700 Billion bail-out package ... In 4 weeks it will not be that fresh in people's mind, and all that it would take to get McCain to win would be a moderate mistake or "scandal" for Obama days before the election.

This, people were trumpeting the new coming of McCain when he was leading by +3 when you averaged all the polls.

Now Obama is leading at +6 on average, and has a bigger margin in the electoral college than EITHER candidate has had this entire race.