Barack Obama smashed John McCain in what may be the most important poll taken in a Presidential year: the Weekly Reader Poll. From Market Watch
In the 14th Weekly Reader election survey, with more than 125,000 votes cast from kindergarten through 12th grade, the result was Obama 54.7% and John McCain 42.9% (with "other" candidates receiving 2.5% of the student vote). The Obama victory in the classroom electoral vote was even more resounding: The Democrat won 33 states and the District of Columbia, garnering 420 electoral votes, while McCain took 17 states and 118 electoral votes.
I doubt very much that the Hyde Park Hero will get that kind of victory next Tuesday, but the Weekly Reader poll isn't kid stuff. It has correctly identified the winner in 12 of the last 13 elections (it was wrong about Bush41/Bill Clinton). It is easy enough to guess why the poll is so accurate: kids generally "vote" the way they think their parents are voting, and the poll is astoundingly large.
Of course an interesting question arises here. Kids are much more exposed to the political media than they used to be, via TV and the Web. A child might easily get the idea from those sources that every living mammal is voting for Obama. Talk about a potential Bradley Effect!
Howard Fineman asks the question that keeps occurring to me: why isn't the race over? With all the usual factors going so hard against McCain, you'd think Obama would be ten points ahead in all the polls.
Consumer confidence is at an all-time low. The job performance rating of the outgoing Republican president is at Nixon-Carter levels. Nine out of ten voters think the country is off on the wrong track. The Democrats lead in the generic congressional preference vote by a double-digit margin.
Obama has outspent McCain on TV advertising three or four to one (though McCain is matching him in some key states here at the end). Obama has four thousand paid organizers in key states, an unheard of number. Most voters think that McCain's running mate is not qualified to be president. Many people wonder aloud if McCain is in fact too old (72) to be president. Much of the media coverage of Obama has been fawning to say the least, and with good reason. He is one of the most winsome, charismatic candidates to have appeared on the scene in decades.
But in spite of the raw power Obama is bringing to bear, McCain has pulled to within three points nationally in four major polls. Now there are two ways to look at this. One is the way the expanded Gallup poll and the Pew poll choose. Both polls use speculative definitions of likely voters that assume a very different behavior than has been observed in past elections. This may be right. Obama has aroused such passion among so many groups of voters, maybe the tsunami is really building out there. I wouldn't discount the possibility.
If that is what is happening, it is very bad for Republicans. Such a tidal wave will not only sweep Obama into office, it will sweep a lot of Republicans out of the House and Senate. I doubt that any of these speculative factors is built into the polls on in-state races.
If there is no shift in traditional voting patterns, then the race looks likely to be close. Former Clinton shaman, Dick Morris, argues that the undecided vote will swing to McCain. Generally, that block of voters swings against the incumbent. But with no incumbent running, how do we game this? Morris argues that, having been in the lead for so long, and with the Press so much in the tank for him, the race has become a referendum on Obama. That makes him, not President Bush, the de facto incumbent. Well, that's speculation for you! But Morris is surely right that the election is about Obama, not about McCain.
Obama has built his platform on the word "change." Change is empty of any content except "not those guys." Sooner or later voters were bound to ask, okay, if not those guys, then what? Obama hasn't made it very easy to tell what he is really about. That leaves a lot of room for the questionable past to creep into. That, I think, is why Obama has not be able to wrap it up.
Like Newsweek's Fineman, I am amazed that there is still a race. I will be even more amazed if McCain pulls it out. I still expect Barack Obama to be our next President, and I expect that Tuesday is going to be very dark for Republicans nationally. But I had no reason to expect that the race would still be interesting six days out.
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