James Pedrick’s Blog

This morning, it became clear that the 2012 presidential race has already taken off. Candidates use leaks to the press to create political narratives. And overnight, Palin’s closest allies used the popular Politico to begin reestablishing their candidate by attacking the McCain campaign’s mishandling of their VP nominee. I doubted Palin would run for the top spot in 2012, but numerous reports have indicated that Palin is extraordinarily ambitious and hungry. Perhaps she already had her eyes set on a national spotlight, and John McCain simply helped introduce her sooner than planned. (more…)

Sad day. The debates are now all over, and we have 20 days before election day. This may have been McCain’s best performances. In actuality, he has had good moments in each debate, but he has been uneven. For every good moment, he seems to have two bad ones. And like Gore in 2000, McCain made in error in not controlling his reactions and body language.

According to CNN, debate watchers say Obama won by a margin of 58-31. 40 percent of these watchers were Democrats (37% of America currently leans Democrat) and 30 percent were Republican (27% of America is Republican). If you assumed these folks each sided with their nominee, Obama would have won the middle by an 18-1 margin. Not good for the candidate who is behind 6-14 points in the polls.

So where is the election today? On October 7, Obama had an 85% probability of winning 269 electoral votes (270 needed to win) and McCain had 150. Today:

If Barack Obama is elected, would he be the first president propelled to the White House by younger people? In reflecting on the earlier stages of this long process, I remembered that even African Americans were leaning toward Hillary Clinton before Obama won the Iowa Caucuses. Young people were the first and only national demographic to line up behind Obama before he won a contest.

This says something about Obama’s campaign, but it says a lot about the Millennial Generation. Supposedly, Millennials are the first civic-minded generation since the GI Generation of World War II. But with this election, Millennials might actually be the leaders and first movers of the political dialogue. Below are some funny video clips to demonstrate how Obama and other groups are encouraging young people to influence the votes of their parents and grandparents… as well as some anecdotal evidence that it might be working with older Jewish voters in Florida.

And check out this CNN article… this kid pitches his grandparents in Florida on Obama and it leads to him giving a talk to more than 100 seniors in their retirement community. Best quote from his pitch:

As Bender told the crowd that Obama was not a Muslim and that Obama was a staunch supporter of Israel, he was met with heads nodding in agreement throughout the room. However, Bender felt the need to drive the point further. If Obama was elected, he said, then Bender would not worry so much about politics and “would have more time to find a nice Jewish girl to marry.”

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/13/great.schlep/index.html

The race as of now:

And my prediction:

Obama undoubtedly has gained ground against McCain over the last couple weeks. The national polls have swung into pretty significant leads but are still volatile What is often less volatile are some of the state polls that give a glimpse of what the political map looks like. Even before the latest trends, Obama started to bank quite a few “red states” into his column, but two of these states now look solidly in his column: Iowa (7) and New Mexico (5). Of Kerry’s blue states, the only true toss-up for Obama is New Hampshire (4) – which remarkably puts Obama right where Al Gore was in 2000 – with a current value of 260 electoral votes… just nine votes from victory.

While there are a few competitive states, the closest toss-ups now are Florida (27), Ohio (20), Virginia (13), Colorado, Nevada (5), and New Hampshire (4). ALL of these are currently trending toward Obama, but the state that is running away the most is Colorado. Value? 9 electoral votes. If this state runs away and goes to the point of no return, like Iowa and New Hampshire, McCain is in real trouble. He’ll have to simultaneously defend these other big states, while trying to somehow pick up ground in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. These are tough states.

On the national polls, Obama’s lead ranges from 4 to 10 percent. Of course, polls are volatile, but they should become increasingly less volatile as we get closer to the election. In addition, Obama’s bounce over these last two weeks have been more because of McCain’s undoing than anything Obama has done… not good news for McCain and more likely to stick.

Note: Two good websites to check out on the electoral map: FiveThirtyEight.com which has the latest poll snapshots, trends, and projections. And 270towin.com which allows you to test out your own thoughts.