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FiveThirtyEight PM Summary http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/...m-edition.html
With fewer than six hours until voting begins in Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, the national polling picture has cleared up considerably. Barack Obama is on the verge of a victory, perhaps a decisive victory, in the race for the White House.
The national polls have all consolidated into a range of roughly Obama +7. That is right about where our model sees the race as well, giving Obama a 6.8 point advantage in its composite of state and national polling. Our model notes, however, that candidates with large leads in the polls have had some tendency to underperform marginally on election day, and so projects an Obama win of 6.0 points tomorrow.
Far more important, of course, is the race for 270 electors. It appears almost certain that Obama will capture all of the states won by John Kerry in 2008. Pennsylvania, while certainly having tightened somewhat over the course of the past two weeks, appears to be holding at a margin of about +8 for Obama, with very few remaining undecideds. Obama also appears almost certain to capture Iowa and New Mexico, which were won by Al Gore in 2000. Collectively, these states total 264 electoral votes, leaving Obama just 5 votes shy of a tie and 6 of a win.
FiveThirtyEight.com: Electoral Projections Done Right: Today's Polls, 11/3 (PM Edition)
McCain's chances, in essence, boil down to the polling being significantly wrong, for such reasons as a Bradley Effect or "Shy Tory" Effect, or extreme complacency among Democratic voters. Our model recognizes that the actual margins of error in polling are much larger than the purported ones, and that when polls are wrong, they are often wrong in the same direction.
However, even if these phenomenon are manifest to some extent, it is unlikely that they are worth a full 6-7 points for McCain. Moreover, there are at least as many reasons to think that the polls are understating Obama's support, because of such factors as the cellphone problem, his superior groundgame operation, and the substantial lead that he has built up among early voters.
McCain's chances of victory are estimated at 1.9 percent, their lowest total of the year.
Excellent data on the impact of cellphones on the polls. May give tremendous insight into why the range of polling results. Could play a major role tomorrow. FiveThirtyEight.com: Electoral Projections Done Right: Reassurance for Dems in NBC/WSJ Survey
Finally, it includes cellphones (which may be part of the reason for the "house effect"). An updated version of the cellphone chart is below. (The polls that include cellphones are highlighted in orange, those that don't are in gray). Between the NBC poll and the final Gallup numbers, the discrepancy has now grown even greater: Obama leads by an average of 10.0 points in the cellphone polls, versus 5.1 in the landline-only's.
Pollster.com: One Day to Go and McCain Is Between Barack and a Hard Place
Tomorrow, Barack Obama will become the first Democratic Presidential candidate since Jimmy Carter in 1976 to win an outright majority of the votes cast on Election Day -- and with it a sizeable majority of electoral votes -- making him the next President of the United States.
We make this projection knowing that the gap is closing both nationally and in key states; it is our sense, however, that this trend would have to continue for another 10 days for the election to swing back to McCain.
The following is our rationale for going with Obama:
Electoral Math: For McCain, the Numbers Aren't Adding Up - TIME
Barring an extraordinary shock, Barack Obama will win more than 270 electoral votes on Tuesday, giving him the White House. Hours before voting starts, John McCain has no clear path to reaching that goal.
In fact, interviews with political strategists in both parties and election analysts and advisers to both presidential campaigns — including a detailed look at public and private polling data — indicate that an Obama victory with well over 300 electoral votes is a more likely outcome than a McCain victory.
With his superior spending, better organization on the ground, and poll standing, Obama actually seems poised to win the majority of the remaining toss-up states. If there is a pro-Democratic/anti-Bush wave cresting, as some top strategists in both parties believe, Obama could take all of the still contested battlegrounds, which would give him nearly 400 electoral votes and a significant multiregional mandate.
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