Pollster.com

Does anyone know when the last major poll will be published?

McCain Surge Continues... !!!

Surge for president!

Undecideds, historically, have always broken for the party that is not in the White House, when conditions are not good in the country.

The talking heads who think the undecideds will break for McCain are contradicted by history.

Just an FYI, the final version of this poll had Bush +0.9 in 2004.

Major National Poll?

I don't think there are anymore left. We should see:

ABCNewsTracking updated today
cbstracking updated today
hotline updated today

I think all the major media national polls are done...

It is really getting down to a situation where there are so many "must win"s for McCain that he stands alomost no chance. Basically Ohio is in that catagory and this poll spells doom for him.

Rasmussen
Obama 52
McCain 46

not sure if he is releasing one tomorrow

correction:

Newsweek will probably have a national poll today.

Hello, I'm a french and i'm very passionate by american election.
Here we are hoping that, no matter who win tomorrow, we will see a strong come back of America as it's used to be and as we always loved, freedom, peace and the model for the whole world.

Following closely the process, There's something that disturb me in the us elections. When i see that all the process is focused
on the swing states, States like New york, Texas, California totally being ignored.
for me, there's something anti democratic there, the fact that the electoral
vote doesn't not count. I would like to ask you what do you feel about that?

in 2000 The national popular vote was reflected in Florida razor thin not sure who wone

in 2004 bush won Ohio by 2% as he did the rest of the country

this year the nation will probably be reflected in Pennsylvania....6-7 point win for OBama will probably be his margin nationwide

"merveilleux:
Does anyone know when the last major poll will be published? "

tomorrow. It should be very accurate as it will have a huge huge huge sample size.

@FromSarkoToObama

The electoral vote does count in those states. California and New York make up a huge portion of Obama's totals. They're simply so heavily and reliably democratic that they don't get much attention.

The Fox/Drudge poll is coming out today. I have not seen the numbers but I think it will be McCain plus 10

in 2000 The national popular vote was reflected in Florida razor thin not sure who wone

in 2004 bush won Ohio by 2% as he did the rest of the country

this year the nation will probably be reflected in Pennsylvania....6-7 point win for OBama will probably be his margin nationwide

@rami: WIN!

@ Dana Adini Where'd you get those numbers?

@rami

Hmm, I wonder what that one is! ;) Thank you for the laugh, I needed it.

rasmussenreports.com

If you are interested in early voting numbers in NC I've posted them with some more details on the NC thread.

at a time like this having Boom here would have been priceless :-)

Oh my God!!! I am so excited. Today I'll go to get my American Flag to turn my mini-van the Freedom/Obama-Victory Mobile for tomorrow night :-)!!!

*Where can I get an American flag?

where would that thread be?

http://www.pollster.com/blogs/nc_obama_50_mccain_49_ppp_1031.php

Rasmussen Daily Tracker - 11/3

Obama - 52
McCain - 46

There is just one more night of tracking and our final results for Election 2008 will be published here tomorrow morning at 9:30 a.m. Eastern.

Tonight, Rasmussen Reports will issue our final wave of Battleground State polls for Colorado, Florida, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia.

I support the Electoral College because it forces candidates to have appeal in several different regions of the country.

@jacob S

ditto

Personally, I think that contrary to conventional wisdom, the electoral college system encourages candidates to campaign actively in FEWER states, not more. It also does not systematically help smaller states or rural areas attract political attention, but again just focuses the candidates' attention on a smaller set of states that includes some small and some big states, and both rural areas and cities.

But what it does do is protect the two-party system, precisely because it creates a situation in which people in non-competitive states have to look for surrogates in competitive states to represent their interests in the election, and the national parties provide that connection.

By the way, I really think people aren't being realistic when they suggest a national popular vote would encourage candidates to limit their geographic appeal relative to the electoral college system.

Think about this from a strategic point of view. Suppose one party decided to write off 49% of the country by population and concentrate on just a set of states that amounted to 51% of the national electorate (anything less would, of course, be a prima facie losing strategy).

Now to make that work, you would need to get almost all of the votes in those 51% states. It would accordingly be very easy for your opponent to just try to keep your margin down a bit in those 51% states while running up their margin in the remaining 49% states.

Or to think of it in party terms, the opposing party would just have to find a candidate with a little bit of appeal in your 51% state and then would cruise to victory, since you have already conceded the 49% states. So your party would have to find someone with at least a little appeal in the 49% states to compensate, which is another way of saying you would have to give up on your 51% strategy.

But now suppose we add the electoral college system. Suddenly your 51% strategy becomes viable because you don't actually need huge margins in those 51% states--you just need slightly over 50% in each of those states. In other words, you actually only need 51% appeal in the states making up 51% to make this work, as opposed to 100% appeal in the 51% states to make it work in the national popular vote system.

And the same logic applies to any other way of slicing up the electorate--we could be talking about the 51% most densely-populated census tracts, or 51% most ethnically diverse census tracts, or 51% most educated census tracts, and so on. Basically, you are always putting yourself in an untenable strategic position in a national popular vote scheme by focusing on too narrow a slice of the electorate, since then all your opponent has to do is slightly reduce your margins to win. But with the electoral college system, you just have to target a little over 50% in your chosen subset of states to be viable.

Nice! This just put O over the 50% margin in Ohio. In order for McCain to win he would theoretically have to convince ALL the undecideds.

DECIDELY not going to happen. :)

@FromSarkoToObama

I don't know how much you know of the history of the Electoral College, since Europeans tend to know more about U.S. history/politics than Americans about Europe, so forgive me if this seems pedantic.

One thing you need to know is that in the original thought processes behind the Electoral College, direct voting was considered to be a sort of abomination. In fact, the original Republican party was derogatorily called the Democratic-Republican Party as an insult because they believed in more direct representation. Now 200+ years later, and with Americans truly being traditionalist we don't really want a big change. In addition, one reason we use the EC is to allow smaller states to have more of a voice in the selection process to avoid them being totally ignored (in the 18th Century, Virginia had 30% of the population of the U.S.). Of course, this means that a single vote in WY counts towards 3 EV, while a single vote in CA counts towards 54 EV. Since CA has a population 52 times greater than WY, this means a WY vote is 17 times more effective than a CA vote.

Now, as I'm sure you know, we don't actually vote for a President, but for Electors who will make the choice (some states specifically point this out on the ballot). In many, if not most, cases, the Electors do not have to vote for the choice of the people. In fact, in some states, as in Florida, the popular vote doesn't really count. If they want, the Florida legislature can overturn the vote of the people and select a slate of electors as they see fit. (I believe that is still the case).

One overall benefit of the Electoral College is that since it meets a month later, they can completely vote differently. Suppose it turns out that President Elect Whoever turns out to be a pedophile, the EC can then select someone completely different.

Now the problem, of course, is what you pointed out. Namely, that candidates don't have to worry about focusing on states that they cannot win (e.g. NY, CA for the Reps, and TX for the Dems). I agree that seems undemocratic. Part of the problem is how different campaign tactics and money spent affect the election. Campaign ads are far more effective in areas with large populations; that is, where you can reach a lot of people for less bucks. As such, if the EC were eliminated then candidates would, mostly, ignore smaller states and areas in favor of larger states and areas were their money and time would be more effective. Why take an ad buy in WY that would only reach 30,000 people when you can spend a little more to reach 300,000 people. Or hold a rally of 2000 people when you can have one of 60,000 people.

Interesting fact: Lincoln, in 1860, won less than 40% of the vote but won the electoral college with 60% of electors. Part of this was because he faced three opponents. Yet, if you combined the popular vote for all three opponents into one of the candidates, Lincoln still would have won with 55% of the EC even though his opponent would have won over 60% of the vote. IMO, things worked out the way they should have.

I'm in favor of getting rid of the 2 extra (Senate) votes in the states and having each district elect an Elector separately from the state. The problem with that is that districts are "gerrymandered" to insure one party or the other will automatically win the district. That is undemocratic.

I've got to stop righting these professorial long posts.

@radmod
Thanks for your answer, I liked the democratic primaries, because "the winner doesnt take all", candidates have visited all the states, every voice counted, i prefer such model.
But i understand your point of view.

Thanks.