October 9, 2008
Obama set to sweep all six swing states
Some statewide projections for all six swing states are below (my methodology is here):
Michigan: Obama + 2.81
Missouri: Obama + 2.81
Ohio: Obama + 3.26
Pennsylvania: Obama + 13.19
Florida: Obama: Obama +3.68
Wisconsin: Obama + 7.90
Things are very dire for McCain at the moment, though I wouldn’t rule him out completely. The only thing that could change the contest is for Palin to be impeached or destroyed by tomorrow’s report. Then maybe he can pick a new running mate who might give him a chance of victory.
Posted in Election 2008 | Tagged florida, michigan, missouri, ohio, pennsylvania, wisconsin | No Comments »
October 8, 2008
Obama set to sweep the ‘Big Four’
Some statewide projections for the swing states of Pennsylvania and Ohio are below (my methodology is here):
Michigan: Obama + 4.15
Missouri: Obama + 2.81
Ohio: Obama + 3.26
Pennsylvania: Obama + 12.18
At the moment Obama is project to sweep at least four out of the six swing states that have predicted the electoral college winner in every election since 1912. However, McCain can take some consolation that Obama’s lead in the two states carried by Bush (Missouri and Ohio) is extremely slender. Obama may be powering ahead, but the election is by no means over, although if the election were held today McCain would need a lot of luck to snatch a victory fromt the jaws of defeat. One gets the feeling that the whole McCain/Palin edifice (especially the latter part of the ticket) is one blow away from crumbling - although it has to be said that McCain has managed to come back from certain defeat before.
Posted in Election 2008 | Tagged barack obama, john mccain, michigan, missouri, ohio, pennsylvania | No Comments »
October 7, 2008
Obama landslide in PA, small lead in OH
Some statewide projections for the swing states of Pennsylvania and Ohio are below (my methodology is here):
Pennsylvania: Obama + 12.46
Ohio: Obama + 3.26
Moving the national focus to the ‘big six’ (Pennslyvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Florida, Missouri and Michigan) finds Pennsylvania and Ohio in Obama’s column. McCain desperately needs to win Pennslyvania to give him some breating room and to hold Ohio at all costs. Instead the Senator from Arizona finds himself being crushed in Pennslyvania and behind in Ohio. The only consolation is that Obama’s lead in Ohio is relatively small for a state that has consistently mimicked the national vote very closely since 1968.
Posted in Election 2008 | Tagged barack obama, john mccain, ohio, pennsylvania | No Comments »
October 6, 2008
Palin descends into the gutter
My new projections are (my methodology is here):
Barack Obama 50.72
John McCain 44.04
Barack Obama’s lead is at its highest since I started looking at polling projections just before Super Tuesday. This surpasses (by 0.01%!) the previous record on June 7th, the day Hillary Clinton formally conceeded. To be frank, I think McCain’s camp is starting to go a little bit too far with their attacks on Obama. While I believe that McCain was wrong to take Jeremiah Wright off the table, I believe that going around talking about Obama “palling around with terrorists” is something that is both electorally counterproductive and something that could incite people to acts of violence.
At best it is dirty campaigning which sullies the reputations of everyone involved, especially McCain and Palin, but also McCain’s surrogates. On the other hand, although I’m not happy that Joe Lieberman has been forced to appear at rallies with Palin, he has avoided making claims about her foreign policy credentials or her abilities and stuck to the relatively apolitical ‘concerned citizen/Washington outsider’ line. Given that Lieberman and others may be fighting Palin and her ilk for the role of the loyal opposition in the next four years, that seems a wise and honourable choice. Other surrogates have not been so high minded.
I’ve begun closing the rest of my non portfolio positions on McCain, starting with my spread betting position. My view is that McCain’s chances are around 25% and that a damming report on the “Troopergate” scandal may give him the chance to go down fighting with his head held high - rather than with Sarah Palin around his neck.
Posted in Election 2008 | Tagged john mccain, sarah palin | 4 Comments »
October 5, 2008
McCain is in serious trouble
My new projections are (my methodology is here):
Barack Obama 50.54
John McCain 44.40
I don’t like writing John McCain off. However, I have to say that the market consensus (of McCain having a 35% chance of victory in November) is about right – with or without Palin on the ticket (though he may have no choice but to dump her after the report on Troopergate comes out on Friday). Although I may be biased because I lost money betting on both vice-presidencies, the polls clearly state that the day before McCain decided to pick Governor Palin he was only 0.5% behind Obama, and trending upwards, as Obama’s selection of Biden was a dud and the Democratic convention was bland.
However, McCain now trails Obama by over 6% and Obama’s lead is widening. Indeed, trend analysis indicates that McCain could easily be 8-10% points down on election day, although the polls could be exaggerating Obama’s lead. At the very least it is clear that, while the selection of Sarah Palin may have energised the base, it destroyed McCain’s argument that Obama was too inexperienced. In a time of financial crisis the ‘experience card’ was extremely useful. At the same time, the Democratic have yet to effectively engage Palin. If, and when, they do McCain’s figures could get even worse.
Posted in Election 2008 | Tagged barack obama, john mccain, sarah palin | 1 Comment »
October 2, 2008
After the 2010 Congressional election at least one third of the current members of the House of Reps will no longer be in Congress.
Obama (if he is elected) is going to have to raise taxes and abandon his spending plans as soon as he gets in because of Paulson’s folly. This will lead to a massive GOP landslide in 2010.
Posted in Election 2008 | Tagged mcccain, obama | 1 Comment »
October 1, 2008
(Moore) wisdom from the mouths of fools
“EVERYBODY NEEDS TO TAKE A DEEP BREATH, CALM DOWN, AND NOT LET FEAR RULE THE DAY. Turn off the TV! We are not in the Second Great Depression. The sky is not falling. Pundits and politicians are lying to us so fast and furious it’s hard not to be affected by all the fear mongering. Even I, yesterday, wrote to you and repeated what I heard on the news, that the Dow had the biggest one day drop in its history. Well, that’s true in terms of points, but its 7% drop came nowhere close to Black Monday in 1987 when the stock market in one day lost 23% of its value. In the ’80s, 3,000 banks closed, but America didn’t go out of business. These institutions have always had their ups and downs and eventually it works out.” - Michael Moore
Now, as readers may have gathered, I am against the bailout. This is on mostly right of centre grounds (it’s an unecessary intervention, will waste American taxpayers money and British taxpaers will end up paying for it if Obama has his way) combined with some left of centre grounds (it will tie up money that could be used for universal healthcare). However, the annoying thing about being against the bailout is having to admit that for once, and once only, Michelle Malkin, Ron Paul and now Michael Moore are speaking more sense that the editorial boards of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, though some of their solutions (including Michael Moore’s) are almost as bad (or worse) than the Paulson plan.
The annoying thing is that this was unecessary. The PPI (the economic wing of the DLC) had some good advice and Charles Schumer had a good plan. But because Nancy Pelosi has neither the spine nor the political common sense to do anything than capitulate to Bush, America (and the rest of the world if Obama has his way) is going to have to pay. Even more annoying is the fact that Malkin, Paul and Moore will use the fact that they correct on this one issue to try to legitimise all the racist, pacifist and plain nutty garbage they spew out (Sullivan and NRO do not fall into this category).
Posted in Election 2008 | Tagged dlc, hank paulson, michael moore, ron paul | No Comments »
October 1, 2008
Up is down, day is (unfortunately) night
I never thought I’d be taking the side of the anti-war website The Daily Kos, the right-wing NRO and Andrew Sullivan, but I have to admit that these articles hit the nail on the head. Unfortunately, McCain still doesn’t get it. McCain had a chance to do the right thing and boost his electoral prospects - unfortunately he looks like he is going to flunk it. The only symbolic thing McCain could do is to persuade/allow Lieberman to vote against the bill, which would at least be a symbolic gesture that a McCain administration might do the right thing in future.
Posted in Election 2008 | Tagged andrew sullivan, barack obama, Joe Lieberman, john mccain | No Comments »
October 1, 2008
If the bill is so filled with pork - might this be a strategy to give McCain cover for voting against it?
Posted in Election 2008 | Tagged bailout bill, john mccain | 1 Comment »
October 1, 2008
His numbers started tanking before the bailout
The conventional wisdom has been that McCain’s response to the bailout has doomed his campaign. While I think that he made a very big judgement of error in the way that he has tried to take every conceivable side of this argument, the polling evidence is clear that since his numbers peaked on September 7th. From then on, there has been a consistent movement to Obama, which the various twists and turns in the bailout have done little to disrupt.
This is demonstrated in the above chart since Obama received his nomination bounce. It can be clearly seen that during the summer McCain began to gradually catch up with Obama, to the extent that he was on track for a 2-3% victory in the popular vote. Given that Obama neither received a bounce from his selection of Biden nor during the Democratic convention, McCain did not need to gamble and could have selected Tim Pawlentry or Lindsay Graham instead. Of course, he same argument could be used against the selection of Lieberman (although it would have been a worthwhile gamble), the evidence is that although Palin’s speech gave McCain a short term boost, her selection has created a trend against him.
This is not surprising. While I may have been a little harsh in my comparison of her to Incitatus, her responses to Gibson and Couric have not inspired any confidence in her abilities to lead. At the same time there is clear evidence that, not only is she even more right-wing than Obama is left-wing, but that her personal life is just as corrupt as those politicians she railed against. While some of the allegations that have been made against her are probably false, it is hard to dispute Buchanan when he claims that she was a ‘brigadier’ for him in 1996.
Ultimately, the fact is that, even if she manages to get through Thursday’s debates, she is not fit to be Vice-President, especially to a seventy-two year old cancer survivor - and believe that average voters are starting to move away from McCain/Palin in response. I still think McCain has about a 30-35% chance of victory, because I think that the markets are undervaluing his chances. However, part of me hopes Palin goes down in flames tomorrow - not least because the unique atmosphere created by the crisis means that McCain has at much chance winning without her as he does with her.
Posted in Election 2008 | Tagged barack obama, john mccain, lindsey graham, palin withdrawal, polling trends, sarah palin, tim pawlentry | No Comments »
September 30, 2008
Good news for Obama
My latest projections have
Barack Obama 50.10
John McCain 45.19
This is good news for Obama, but given that his lead over McCain is less than 5% despite the farce of the Paulson “plan”, he still has work to do. For McCain’s part the fact that he has been trending downwards since September 6th, suggests that he needs to do something radical.
Posted in Election 2008 | Tagged barack obama, john mccain | No Comments »
September 28, 2008
An Obama victory
I finally watched the full debate last night when it was shown on British TV I believe that Obama dominated the segment devoted to the economy. Obama looked more Presidential and explained his views in a sober, serious way, without pandering or resorting to cliche. In contrast, McCain did little to distinguish himself from the generic Republican tax cutting position and kept going on about earmarks - which has become the equivalent of his POW record. This is not to say that either his heroism or his opposition to earmarks are unimportant as a lead into a general debate about waste or character, but on their own they are the equivalent of Giuliani’s ability to bring 9/11 into everything.
Although I agree with McCain on foreign policy, I think Obama performed much better up until the bracelet moment. McCain seemed unable to put forward a rationale for staying in Iraq and seemed too focused on specific details rather than the broader picture. I think for the first half hour McCain seemed to be still suffering the consequences of the crowded Republican primary field which meant that he hadn’t experienced any genuine two-way debates. In contrast, as has been mentioned elsewhere, Obama has been clearly reaping the benefits of having to debate against Hillary Clinton.
McCain’s best moment of the night was the bracelet moment - though at one point in the story he seemed close to tears. In it he finally outlined a rationale for staying in Iraq and characterised himself as part of the wider US Army in Vietnam rather than as an individual hero. Obama’s “I have a bracelet too” retort seemed cheap and unpresidential. From then on McCain started to regain confidence and finally began to outperform Obama. If this had been a purely foreign policy debate then McCain would have won on points - although he should have made his key arguments (such as the link between Iraq and Afghanistan) earlier.
However, the polls suggest that most people in the audience were focused on the economy segment, which was created in response to McCain’s stunt. So, I’m going to say that Obama carried the night overall (though not by much).
Posted in Election 2008 | Tagged barack obama, john mccain | No Comments »
September 26, 2008
Doesn’t the above make one feel more secure than McCain/Palin ?
I should probably give up about the whole idea of Palin being booted from the ticket (but then again many people felt the same about McCain this time last year) but I feel the circumstances are so strange and the sense of crisis (although overhyped) is so pervasive that McCain could actually help his campaign by selecting Lieberman, Giuliani, Condi Rice or anyone whose last name is not Palin. My prediction is that McCain wins the debate tonight; he is definitely the better debater (as Saddleback proved) and he is on firm territory (foreign policy). In any case expectations are so low that he could not fail to get better press coverage than he has got in the last twenty-four hours.
Posted in Election 2008 | Tagged john mccain, rudolph giuliani, sarah palin | No Comments »
September 26, 2008
‘PDS’ speads to the right
I was horrified by the Palin selection from the moment that I heard that she was going to be McCain’s running mate. Part of this was disappointment that McCain had not chosen Lieberman. However, most of my discontent was shock that someone with her inexperience was chosen in time of crisis, and by a candidate who had pitched his entire campaign on his preparedness for a ‘3am moment’. However, even after the initial shock had worn off I was further taken aback by the constant stream of skeletons that had been tumbling out of her closet.
Now, I am not American and the primary rationale of this website is to provide betting advice. However, it is patently obvious that as well as being unqualified and with a lot of scandals, Palin is also rabidly right-wing to an extent not seen since the third party candidacy of George Wallace in 1968. For the record, I don’t particularly care about her stance on abortion, and I think it is like the European Union in British politics, a topic that is of interest to fewer people than is popularly perceived. However, I still don’t understand how McCain can put a Buchananite, Bircher and all round paleo-conservative a heartbeat away from the Presidency.
It is one thing to support Bush’s tax cuts when they are going to pass anyway and last year’s immigration bill was so watered down that it probably wasn’t worth sacrificing a campaign for. However, like the Iraq War, bailout bill, the appointment of Palin to the vice-presidency will have long term consequences for both America and the world. While McCain was correct on Iraq, he has spectacularly failed on his running mate and on the bailout bill (although his posturing may have actually have ensured that it is delayed). Therefore, McCain needs to take advantage of this crisis to ensure that Palin either retires from the ticket, or is dropped from the ticket. Frankly, at this stage anyone would be preferable to her.
In that respect I think Kathleen Parker is correct to call for her resignation. I think we are going to see a few more calls for her resignation in the next few days
Posted in Election 2008 | Tagged john mccain, sarah palin | 2 Comments »
September 25, 2008
The Bailout seems to be having little impact in the polls
My new projections are:
Barack Obama 46.38
John McCain 44.21
My view is that Obama has missed several open goals over the past fortnight. However, the Palin pick (as opposed to anything else) seems to be the big driving force at the moment, as McCain’s lead peaked in the first week on September and has been consistently (but slowly) declining. My guess is that McCain will find a way to oppose the bailout - doing the right thing for the wrong reason. I’m also going to predict that he’ll do well from tomorrow’s debate since expectations are now rock bottom and - as Saddleback proved - he is quite a good debater.
Posted in Election 2008 | Tagged barack obama, john mccain | 1 Comment »
