Cautiously Optimistic

It's three weeks until election day and it's getting down to the wire. But I am optimistic - even a little bit confident - in the waning days of the 2008 presidential election. A month ago, I was nervous. I took a trip with my father and brother in late August/early September as the political conventions were happening. It was right in the middle of the Palin announcement, so we had lots of political conversations. (We are a family that views politics as just another spectator sport - albeit a more personally relevant spectator sport.) I shared my fretting about the race with my brother, who told me to RELAX. He was right and I was wrong. It's even more true now, and here's why Barack Obama will be our next president.

1. It’s getting down to the wire. People are formulating their opinions now – deciding who they will vote for. The number of people “undecided” is fewer and fewer every day and once people make up their minds, it’s generally harder to get them back into the “undecided” column. (Most studies show that people don’t go back and forth between candidates, they move from “undecided” to a candidate; so if they start questioning their choice, they go to “undecided” first, then to the other candidate.)
   
2. The negative attacks won’t work as well now as they did a month ago. When you go negative, you have to distance yourself from the time people vote. People don’t want to vote for someone who is engaged in mudslinging, so candidates have to sling the mud early, then talk about how great they are. Again, it’s part of the psychology of winning people over. The problem is, most people have made up their minds and they view it as mudslinging and lies now. It seems like the desperate act of a desperate man. And polls - especially over the last week - are bearing this out. Sure, some people will be swayed, but most people are completely disgusted by the distractions from the real issues.
   
3. A lot of “undecided” people will vote for the candidate leading in the polls because they want to be in the camp of the winner. Barack Obama isn’t just leading, he’s leading decisively. The lead is even more noticeable when you look at the race from an Electoral College standpoint. One of my favorite sites is http://www.fivethirtyeight.com – which breaks down all kinds of scenarios. Sure they have some bias in their analysis, but as of today, by their calculations Barack Obama has an 93% chance of winning. That’s pretty incredible. Their Electoral Vote counter puts him at 351 to McCain’s 187; 270 are needed to win. Of course, this is based on polling - but it's pretty damning. Which leads me to...
   
4. We haven’t seen polls like this (with a candidate 5-12 points ahead – with three weeks to go) since Ronald Reagan beat Walter Mondale in 1984. Reagon won handily.
   
5. The “Bradley Effect” or “Wilder Effect” isn’t statistically a factor any more. I hear the argument a lot about the Bradley Effect – and I know that’s what Republicans are clinging to in their belief that McCain can still win. But here’s a great paper showing why this has all but disappeared: http://people.iq.harvard.edu/~dhopkins/wilder13.pdf. It's a fascinating read.
   
6. “It’s the economy, stupid.” More than ever, people are worried about the economy. Even McCain knows this. People are not going to be distracted by the guilt-by- association nonsense when they’re paying at the pump, paying at the grocery store and watching their 401Ks disappear overnight. It’s all anyone is talking about. I have never seen so many people wanting to talk about politics, talk about the economy, talk about what’s going on in our country. People who normally want to talk about Brittany Spears want to talk about the economy. (While I love talking politics. I know that a lot of people don’t – they find it boring. The last few weeks, everywhere I go, people want to engage me on the subject. Usually I’m the one bringing it up and sometimes I’m greeted with groans or irritation. It’s very strange for me to have SO MANY people seeking me out to talk about it. I can only assume it’s because they want to discuss it and they know I will discuss it intelligently with them. I have never encountered this level of political enthusiasm before in my life.) As long as people believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, as long as they are talking about the economy, Barack Obama will win. People know in their hearts that McCain represents more of the same.


7. Early voting has already started in many states. This is why the GOP has tried to stop some early voting from happening. They know that whoever is ahead in the polls at the time that people vote will have an overwhelming advantage. Any BS they try to pull late in the process won’t have any effect on folks who already voted.


8. The biggest reason: Ground Game. My brother pointed this out to me last month when I was fretting about the Palin Effect, and I think it’s extremely significant. Barack Obama has devoted a significant portion of his substantial resources to Get Out The Vote efforts. GOTV is considered to be the only reason why Bush won his second term. Karl Rove spent a huge amount of time and resources finding ways to get GOP voters motivated to go to the polls in 2004 – state by state anti-gay marriage laws was the chief among those efforts. The GOP doesn’t have that this time around and they largely have an unmotivated base. Palin is the only thing that’s motivating them at all these days, which is why she was put on the ticket. But the hard-core right wingers can't stand McCain. Barack Obama, on the other hand, has motivated huge swaths of voters. These voters are also underrepresented in polls. (It’s a nice counter-argument to the Bradley Effect argument. Young people are far more likely to be Obama voters and they’re far more likely to be “cell phone only” people. Polls do not contact “cell phone only” people. They use auto-dialers to contact respondents and it’s illegal to use an auto-dialer to call a cell phone. Only one pollster - Seltzer - adjusts their numbers for “cell phone only” people, but they all adjust for everything else – age, gender, race, party affiliation. Seltzer was the only one to get the Iowa Caucus numbers correct – everyone else was wildly off. And guess who won the Iowa Caucuses? Barack Obama. As long as these young, “cell phone only” folks are motivated to vote, this will be a factor in the election.) Right now, a lot of Obama’s GOTV efforts have focused on getting new registered voters and encouraging young voters to get to the polls.

So even though I'm confident, even though polls put Barack Obama WAY ahead, even though the right wing is somewhat demoralized - now is the time to work even harder, to talk to more people, to make a donation if you can. Because the only poll that counts is the one on November 4th.

Mostly, I'm just excited for January 20, 2009, when the eight-year nightmare will finally come to an end.