If you’re an Obama supporter, worry…and work. This race is still tight.
McCain is focusing on Pennsylvania for good reason. It’s his best chance to get over the 270 Electoral College vote threshold.
Virginia isn’t in Obama’s column yet, not by a long shot. If the polls showing Obama with a big lead in Virginia are wrong, what about Colorado, Ohio and Florida?
But I suggest that why Dems should be nervous is not because some polls show a tighter race; it’s because the incessant coverage of polls might be impacting the electorate in ways we don’t yet understand. I think there may be a tendency for mischief on the part of those who take part in polls.
Sure, most folks do not read FiveThirtyEight.com, Pollster.com or the various tracking polls on a daily basis. And clearly the news coverage is against McCain. Still, most of the electorate sense they tenor of the coverage and the fact that McCain is clearly the underdog, with the media having a hard time not shouting, “It’s over!”
Would poll respondents lie? Sure. I have. Wanting to get phone calls and mailers from the opposition, I have intentionally answered questions in a way I thought would put me on their “likely” list.
But many voters must be getting a little pissed at hearing that a landslide is coming and there’s nothing McCain, and in turn they, can do about it. Some might argue that hearing such stories makes them less likely to show up at the polls. The same can be said of Obama’s supporters, too, their being too confident to pass up their workout or running an errand instead of standing in a long line.
But I wonder if a lot of folks, even those who would have voted for McCain but have been disappointed in him, might decide in the end to pull his lever, just to show those media elite that they can’t tell them what they’ll do. After all, in a sample of 800 voters, how many can lie before they screw the results? Probably not too many.
Polls tend to take the suspense out of election day. This year, with more polls than ever and the constant coverage of them, some voters might decide to put the suspense back in it.
OK, I’m a nervous Democrat. But it could happen. It could.