Obama leads McCain by 2.58%

McCain needs to throw caution to the wind

As the hours tick down to Obama’s acceptance speech and McCain’s decision about a running mate, my final projections are:

Barack Obama 47.19
John McCain 44.61

These are produced by putting polls of likely voters (source: Pollster.com) through the filtering programme Samplemiser.

It is obvious that voters want a Democrat as their next President but don’t want Obama. McCain could probably grind out a win by picking Pawlentry and going negative but does he really want to face Obama’s incredible cash machine? My view is that his gaffe about housing has eliminated Romney. Similarly, Obama’s selection of Biden has damaged Pawlentry. My guess (which is the same as it has been for the past year or so) is that we are going to see a McCain/Lieberman ticket, but with Lieberman pledging to uphold the Republican stance on abortion. Certainly, this is the key moment of the election. Even if McCain doesn’t do the right thing he’s still come a long way from near anhilation, but the logic of this primary season demands the selection of Lieberman.

Saddleback: My impressions

A narrow victory for McCain

After a quick read of the transcript, I’ve come to the conclusion that both McCain and Warren were the winners of the Saddleback forum last night. The fact that posters on Daily Kos are talking about ‘bias’, and even insinuating that Warren somehow leaked the questions to McCain beforehand, tells you all you need to know. Ironically, I was impressed by Warren. Although he had set expectations low by hinting he would ask bland questions more suited to a job interview than a Presidential forum, he managed to keep his questions relevant.

McCain clearly had two things in mind; to throw red meat to the base on abortion without ruling out Lieberman and to quash the spin that he was incoherent. He accomplished both things and also managed to raise the tone of the evening by mentioning John Lewis as one of those he would listen to closely. He clearly isn’t going to make inroads into Obama’s support in the African-American community, but it is nice to see him acknowledging it’s existence, something Hillary Clinton failed to do. His conservative stance on taxation was disappointing. However, McCain will hopefully have used his choice of running mate to demonstrate that he is not a generic Republican by the time the Presidential debates begin.

McCain also made the strategic decision to answer the less important questions more quickly, allowing him to give a detailed response on the issues he wanted to emphasise. Obama, on the other hand, took around the same time on each question, which meant that Warren was forced to cut him off on some of the questions. McCain also directly confronted the question about his first marriage without prompting, thus removing one of Obama’s possible lines of attack. The only slightly hollow note was the reference to the Obama’s decision to educate their daughters privately.

Obama will gain some credit for showing up in what is Republican territory. However, the way his appearance had been over-hyped and the fact that this was a relatively sympathetic environment, means that any boost on these grounds will be marginal. The only positive thing that Obama did well was to mention his elderly grandmother as one of those whom he consults regularly, though that risks re-dredging up memories of Wrightgate. Reading the transcript Obama seemed hesitant and nearly avoided making a major gaffe in his speech about Clarence Thomas. As someone who has money on McCain I am happy that my worst fears were not realised.

Happy 4th of July!

Greating from TPT

As regular readers will know I am not American. In fact my side was on the losing end of the War of Independance. However, I wish all readers a happy fourth of July.

Another day another 5% Obama lead

Well actually it’s a 5.05% lead but who’s counting?

My new national projections are:

Barack Obama 49
John McCain 43.95

I don’t know what is more strange; McCain’s utterly aparthetic style of campaigning or the fact that despite all that, and despite Obama’s move to the centre McCain is still within spitting distance of the Audacity of Hype (sorry, Senator Obama). Part of me wishes Obama were racking up double digit leads because that would have forced McCain to make some real changes to his campaign’s strategy rather than tinkering with the organisation. In any case any sensible person would think that Rick Davis’s days are now pretty much numbered, but I have been saying that for a while now.

NOTE: My methodology for my detailed polling projections involves collating all the available polls of likely voters and then filtering them through Samplemiser, a Kalman filter. I only used polls of likely voters and I get my data from pollster.com.

More veepstakes speculation

TPT ponders Obama-Hagel

Given that there aren’t that many polls and the primary season is all but finished, speculation of who Obama and McCain’s running mate will be will probably dominate both the media and this web-log for the next few weeks. Reading Andrew Sullivan’s article about Chuck Hagel I was struck by how much one could say similary things about McCain and Lieberman, in that Lieberman (Hagel) is a solid Democrat (Republican) on everything but his support for (opposition to) the War in Iraq. However, the real difference between the two is while Lieberman is a respected figure who was selected as Gore’s running mate in 2000 and had the guts to stand up to Clinton, Hagel has done nothing. Another, more cynical, comparison would be between the large number of pieces of legislation that McCain and Lieberman have sponsored (or co-sponsored) together and Obama’s legislative achievements. It would also seem ridiculous for Hagel, a strong personal friend of McCain, to ditch the party at the very moment a moderate had triumphed, while Lieberman waited until the Kossacks had completely taken over the Democratic party to leave.

Note: I’m still adjusting to the WordPress rules about sidebars, so I apologise to the person whose post I just deleted.

Returning to National Greatness: How the GOP can reinvent itself

TPT offers some advice to the elephant

The Republican party seems to be in turmoil with a combination of poor congressional ratings and a shocking results in Mississippi producing a crisis of confidence that has seen the ravings of Ron Paul climb to the top of the bookseller charts. Given that every person with access to a computer has written about the direction the Republican party should be taking, I am going to outline my suggestions on what the Republican party should do. It might seem strange that a left-of-centre Brit, who is definitely not any sort of conservative, is giving advice to the GOP, but I would contend that the amount of money that I have staked on Obama not being president, and the small amount that I have on the Republicans retaking Congress makes my motivations more straightforward that those of other commentators. In any case distance from the subject has never stopped me before so it is not going to stop me now.

The first thing that the Republican party needs to do is to move to the centre on economic issues. The Democrats, even though they have been dominated by the left, have managed to gain a huge advantage on the economy, healthcare and taxation. Indeed, had September 11th not increased the importance of national security, and unleashed the forces that would move the Democrats sharply to the left, the Republican party would have lost badly in 2002 and a Democrat would now be occupying the White House. Even the Republican magazines were disgusted with the ‘no-government anarchism’ of Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson and Ron Paul when it dominated the Republican debates in the fall of 2004. Economic conservatism might have got some traction in the 70s and 80s when taxes were sky high, but they now seem like an anachronism in an age of increasing inequality. By all means the Republican party should remain an opponent of wasteful spending and a supporter of free trade, since these are good for society whatever philosophy you support, but it should recognise that the government needs to play a more active role in healthcare and education.

The Republican party also needs to stop treating people like Newt Gingrich with reverence. Although he occasionally has a few good ideas, such as his support for a McCain/Lieberman ticket, he is extremely unpopular in the country at large. Indeed, the latest poll gave Newt Gingrich a net approval rating of -27%. Similarly, although it may break the heart of Andrew Sullivan, Barry Goldwater should not be a model for the modern Republican party, unless they want to experience a repeat of 1964. Although many people believe that Bush was unpopular because he departed from ‘conservative’ (or more accurately paleo-libertarian) principles, the inconvenient truth is that it was precisely those departures (Iraq, No Child Left Behind) that have made him a middle-ranking president, as opposed to one of the worst. Even if one ignores the fact that the policies of the libertarian and conservative philosopher kings of the Republican Party are both unpopular and unworkable, their ‘leave us alone’ philosophy on guns directly runs against their distaste for immigrants and their love for limited government and the market runs against their support for attempts to find loopholes to the antitrust laws.

In essence the Republicans need to re-read David Brook’s 1997 essay, ‘A Return to National Greatness: A Manifesto for a Lost Creed’. In this David Brooks argues for a several key principles, ‘limited but energetic government, full-bore Americanism, active foreign policy, big national projects (such as the Panama Canal and the national parks), and efforts to smash cozy arrangements (like the trusts) that retarded dynamic meritocracy’. In essence this means a more socially conservative version of the Blairite/DLC agenda. Of course, you could argue that it has been Bush’s pursuit of this agenda that has got the GOP in these straits. However, it is not Bush’s foreign policy that is the reason that he is at twenty eight percent in the pollster.com polling averages, it has been his departure from it. This was illustrated in the 2004 exit polls where Bush beat Kerry by nearly twenty points (59.5 vs 40.2) among voters who were concerned about foreign policy (National Security and Iraq) but lost by a whopping 33% with those who focused more on domestic issues (Healthcare, Education and Taxes).

Indeed, the triumph of the anti-war and anti-everything wing of the Democratic party has opened an opportunity for the Republicans to capture the centre ground, as has the emergence, in Barack Obama, of a Democratic candidate who not only seems determined to drive a wedge between the generations but is more likely to nod his head to Jeremiah Wright’s rantings than view his country as a force for good. When even someone like Hillary Clinton is held to be too right-wing and too wedded to middle America for the Democratic party, you know that something is wrong. Of course, it is important to remember that there are potential flaws. This strategy should not be an imitation of David Cameron or Boris Johnson’s peculiar amalgam or elitism, isolationist (and in Boris Johnson’s case) racism. It also should be noted that ‘full-bore Americanism’ in this context means a celebration of a ‘shinning city on a hill’ and positive action to welcome immigrants out of the shadows of the underground economy into the American family, rather than a xenophobic immigration policy or the unwholesome dog whistling that Hillary Clinton and the North Carolina GOP have been engaged in. In essence this means combining the populism and honour of John McCain, combined with Giuliani’s optimism and Lieberman’s principled stance on foriegn policy and family values.

Why Obama will NOT win the Presidency – even if he wins the nomination

Ten Reasons why there won’t be a President Obama any time soon

Over the next ten days I am going to write a series of articles detailing why Barack Obama can’t beat John McCain. Although I will look at each factor in detail, for now I will just list them.

1. Jeremiah Wright means that, whatever McCain does, the Republican base will ultimately be behind him. This will allow McCain to move to the centre.

2. Barack Obama’s antiwar stance will make the election about foreign policy rather than the economy. There is clear evidence that people are willing to listen to someone who can put forward a consistent plan for seeing Iraq through to victory. According to the polls, more people trust McCain than Obama on Iraq.

3. Obama’s reliance on students and 18-24 voters who tend to be less reliable is risky to say the least. George McGovern found out the hard way that they can change their minds between the Spring and November.

4. John McCain’s role as a moderate Republican set against Obama’s extremely liberal (in Amercian terms) voting record.

5. Although Hillary will support Obama many of her surrogates will not, so that Hillary could make a comeback in 2012.

6. There is a serious question mark about Obama’s competence on foreign policy and his judgement in choosing such advisors/mentors as Samantha Power and Jeremiah Wright.

7. Obama’s lack of experience will contrasts embarrassingly with McCain’s. This didn’t matter so much among Democrats, but it will play poorly with moderates, independents and weak Republicans.

8. The Latino-American vote will go to McCain (or at least break even). This is not on some assumption, as had been suggested, that Latino voters are somehow biased but simply a recognition that McCain carried 75% of the Latino vote in his home state. Latino-American voters have been steadily losing their automatic identification with the Democrats and becoming more like typical voters.

9. Obama can’t help being perceived as slightly wimpish and elitist. This is unfair but, as John Kerry in 2004 and Michael Dukakis in 1988 found out, such things unfortunately matter.

10. George W Bush will not be a candidate.

Obama leads by 8.58% in North Carolina

Obama’s lead only increases a little bit

Adding the latest polls to the collection of North Carolina polls, I’ve come up with the following projections.

Barack Obama 47.75
Hillary Clinton 38.87

Although Obama has increased his lead a little bit, he still needs to get it past the 10% mark at the very least. As I said before, given that neither Clinton and Obama will have enough pledged delegates to ensure the nomination, it all comes down to convincing the Superdelegates.

McCain leads Clinton and Obama

McCain needs to overhaul his campaign

My new national projections (last poll ending April 30th) are:

John McCain 44.20
Barack Obama 44.06

John McCain 46.00
Hillary Clinton 43.19

Although McCain is ahead, the size of the lead against both Clinton and Obama is very small considering the events of the last two weeks. This, and his bizarre gaffe on foreign policy, really indicate that he needs to make wholescale changes to his team beyond simply making marginal additions and subtractions. He also needs to make another major speech on foriegn policy, given that his comments at the townhall seem to completely go against what he has stood for throughout the campign.

Hillary leads by 7.84% in Indiana

More bad news for Obama

I’ve come up with the following projections for Indiana.

Hillary Clinton 50.35
Barack Obama 42.51

Although the PPP gives Hillary a slightly smaller lead, it boosts her by confirming her larger lead in Indiana. My view is that winning Indiana and losing by less than 15 will strengthen Hillary’s hand. Although Hillary can’t win in terms of pledged delegates she can win in terms of the popular vote, which will give the Superdelegates enough reason to start justifying voting for her.

Obama leads by only 10% in North Carolina

Obama’s lead falls in North Carolina

Adding the latest polls to the collection of North Carolina polls, I’ve come up with the following projections.

Barack Obama 50.31
Hillary Clinton 40.31

Obama support is diminishing in North Carolina, but the Survey USA poll that had him only 5% ahead of Clinton was balanced out by the Rasmussen poll that had him 14% ahead. My view is that Wrightgate will hurt him even more. However, if Hillary wants to gain the nomination, and my view is that she has a good shot at achieving it, she is going to have do so over the face of a tremendous amount of opposition. Such opposition will not be fatal to her chances but it will require a bit of courage.

Too little, too late

Is Obama really a ‘victim’ of Wright?

Unfortunately, it looks like Obama and his supporters will probably have the chutzpah to claim that Obama is a ‘victim’ of Wright. Of course, in realty Obama spent 20 years in Wright’s church and knew fully well what he was getting into when he dedicated his autobiography to Wright, donated a large sum of money to Wright’s church, asked him to serve on an advisory council and said that Wright was ‘a sounding board for me to make sure that I am speaking as truthfully about what I believe as possible’. Obama’s prolonged association with Wright shows, at the very least, appalling judgement and heavily hints at a worldview that is sympathetic to dictators and doesn’t view America as a force for good. In times when the West is facing a concerted enemy, there is no room for this sort of thinking. It is also ironic that find it that Obama’s supporters praised Obama for not repudiating Wright but now, once it becomes obvious that Wright was not misquoted, have changed their tune and now think that Wright is attempting to destroy Obama’s campaign.

Of course a quite a few commentators have been sympathetic to Obama about this latest outburst and some people will buy into this latest spin that Wright has ‘gone postal’. Indeed, Rush Limbaugh has gone so far as to state that, ‘Clinton minister set up Obama’s minister, exactly right, Errol Louis is saying today that the organizer of Wright’s appearance at the National Press Club was set up, and she was sitting right next to him at the dais talking to him. He was set up by Barbara Reynolds who is a Clinton operative’. A I’m willing to entertain the possibility that, like Samantha Power’s outburst about Hillary Clinton, Wright’s latest rantings may have been a tactical move to allow Obama to disown Wright without repudiating Wright’s value. However, I don’t buy into the conspiracy theory that Wright wants to destroy Obama’s campaign or the bizarre assertion that Hillary Clinton is somehow behind this.

To be honest both the McCain and Clinton campaigns have handled it badly. Saying nothing has enabled Obama to spin it the way that he wanted to and left the nastier element of the GOP, such as the Republican party in North Carolina, to try to turn this into a question of race rather than of foreign policy. Ironically, the New York Times complains that, ‘Mr. McCain has not tried hard enough to stop a race-baiting commercial’. As soon as the first tapes were aired Hillary should have held a press conference in New York and denounced his comments about 9/11 and tied it into Obama’s leadership. If she or McCain were unwilling to do so themselves they should have got surrogates like Chuck Schumer or Rudy Giuliani to do so. I also think that to compare it with Hagee is silly, since despite what the New York Times tries to imply, Hagee has not been McCain’s pastor for 20 years, nor has McCain used Hagee as a sounding board. Although McCain’s decision not to fully repudiate Hagee’s endorsement was disappointing, comparing the two is silly. While McCain may have accepted Hagee’s endorsement (and that of Rob Parsley) McCain is not an ethusiastic congregant of either. This episode does show the extent to which some in the media are prepared to shill for Obama, even to the extent of trying to spin his relationship with Wright as a positive.

Too much chaos is never a good thing

Why Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh are being too clever for their own good

Having been defeated in their attempt to prevent John McCain from becoming the Republican nominee, many on the Republican right have turned their attention to a rather surprising cause; helping get Hillary Clinton selected as the Republican nominee. Although a few commentators on the right, most notoriously the pundit Ann Coulter, may consider John McCain so repugnant as to make the election of Hillary Clinton preferable, the stated aim of these pundits is to delay the moment of Hillary’s concession, rather than to get her nominated. Indeed, the notorious ‘shock-jock’ Rush Limbaugh has stirred up massive controversy by stating that his ideal would be a brokered Democratic convention that ends in recriminations and disaster, stating ‘this is about chaos. .. the dream end of this is that this keeps up to the convention and that we have a replay of Chicago 1968, with burning cars, protests, fires, literal riots, and all of that’. Rather appropriately, this attempt to get Republican voters to cast their votes for Clinton has been dubbed ‘Operation Chaos’.

However, even ignoring the utter irresponsibility of encouraging anything that could lead to violence, Limbaugh’s assumptions are faulty because Hillary could still win the nomination. Although Barack Obama is virtually certain to have a lead in pledged delegates by the time of the convention, such a lead doesn’t carry any more weight than Clinton’s lead in the total number of votes cast in the primaries and caucuses. At the same time Obama’s defeat in Pennsylvania reduces the chances of either enough super-delegates moving towards him or the possibility that a crowd of Democratic grandees will ‘take Hillary to one side’, something they have been reluctant to do so despite their leaning toward the Senator from Illinois. Although nominating Hillary will risk alienating younger voters, the sad reality is that many of them won’t vote anyway in November. In contrast, selecting Obama could alienate the swing voters and moderate that the Democrats need to win if they are to take the White House.

Although it has been claimed that any overall victory for Clinton would be pyrrhic, this is not the case. By selecting either Harold Ford, Sanford Bishop or Ken Salazar as her running mate, Hillary could heal the wounds created by the primary battle while appealing to the vital centre. All of these of these prospective running mates would boost her either the South or the Southwest, while neither of them have the huge amount of baggage, both ideological and personal, that Obama possess. Of course, Hillary Clinton is still intensely polarising, but in an environment where Democrats have a clear lead in party affiliation, this might not be the disadvantage that many commentators believe it to be. A Clinton-Ford or Clinton-Sanford ticket would also blunt the two major lines of attack that the Republicans plan to use against Obama, namely his inexperience and his ability to deal with the threat of terrorism. Having a moderate like Ken Salazar on the ticket would boost turnout among Hispanic-Americans, the one traditionally Democratic demographic where turnout can realistically be boosted.

Ironically, every exit poll has suggested that the majority of the Republicans taking part in the Democratic primaries have voted for Obama rather than Clinton. Although this could be evidence of Obama’s appeal it is far more likely that Republican voters see Clinton as the real threat to a McCain victory and are ignoring Coulter and Limbaugh’s attention seeking antics. It must also be pointed out that the Democrats managed to put the disturbances of August 1968 behind them to come, despite the fact that the outgoing President Lyndon Johnson was deeply unpopular, within a few votes of defeating Richard Nixon. This is a point that both those who rub their hands together at the prospect of chaos and those who are urging Hillary to drop out, ‘for the good of the party’, should remember and consider. Of course, John McCain is a stronger candidate than both Clinton or Obama, but Hillary should not be written off as a weak candidate by either friend or foe.

British Polling Projections: Conservative Majority of 136

Will this put Brown’s head on the line?

Adding the latest ICM poll to my collection and filtering it produces the following projections:

Conservatives 43.69 (393)
Labour 26.4 (195)
Liberal Democrats 17.07 (33)

As a point of reference, popular alternatives produce the following; (Poll of polls) Con 40.2 Lab 30.6 LDm 17.8 (5 Poll Rolling Average) Con 41.2 Lab 30.6 LDm 17.8 Although the idea of a 17.29% Conservative lead is probably an exaggeration (though not too far of reality), the double digit rolling poll averages and the similarly dire poll of polls are bad for Labour. Very serious questions about Brown should now be asked by backbenchers. My £8 on Charles Clarke at 50/1, £1 on Hazel Blears at 100/1 and £ on John Reid at 50/1 might not be so crazy after all!

Will this really be that effective?

A contrarian perspective on Obama’s voter registration drive.

The internet is buzzing with the news that Barack Obama’s campaign is going to be launching a massive voter registration drive in all 50 states. While this is a publicity stunt more than anything, and a rather suspect attempt to try and create the illusion that he is anything more than a mere contender for the Democratic nomination, its does raise the question as to whether Obama can get any milage out of bringing unlikely voters to the poll. On the fact of it this would be a logical idea, because the Democrats overwhelmingly lead with young voters and ethnic minorities, two demographics that have poor turnout records. It is also something all parties should be doing, as a gift to the American political process. However, the groups that the Democrats have targeted are either already are more likely to vote than the average voter of comprable incomes or are simply unwilling to come to the polls. Although any increased turnout is good for borth Democracy and the Democratic party, the Democrats should not rely on getting new voters to the polls, but spend more time trying to win over existing voters. Indeed, according to one analysis in 2004, Kerry beat Bush by around 10% among first time voters, but Bush still won the election!