-- Also

Obama won this state barely in the primaries due to the turnout in Missouri's urban centers.

And remember that the urban centers in Missouri report last- so we won't know this state until late at night. I think Obama closed something like a 10% Clinton lead with the last 20% reporting.

MO seems like it'd give a better return on campaign investment than PA.

Turnout can never be accounted for. Case in point:Georgia.

MO is a tossup but our GOTV cannot be matched, we will win the state and we will wind it by alot larger than people would think.

Fearing Electoral Blowout, GOP Employs Cheney to Preach ‘Checks and Balances’
http://satiricalpolitical.com/?p=4363

So according to SurveyUSA McCain is leading Obama in the 18-24 bracket.

I worry about Missouri. It does not have early voting (republican controlled state legislature) and I am affraid the polls are going to be extremely busy on election day. Since the biggest chunk of democratic voters are concentrated in two urban areas, St Louis and Kansas City, I hope there will be enough voting places and machines in these two cities to accomodate the number of voters. Having said that, Missourians will elect a democratic governor this year. And hopefully also vote the state for Obama.
Moose

I for one am not going to be happy if this election comes down to a Nevada squeaker. If by 8:00 EST either Ohio or Florida hasn't gone to Obama, I will die. Die I tell you.

When I hear people saying that we can lose PA, OH, and FL and still win, I wanna scream. If we lose those states, that will mean that the election is trending across the board in McCain's favor. And the trend would very likely include CO and NV. We have to win PA and at least one of the other two. What a horrible night it will be if we don't.

Right now I think the only game being played is the extent of Obama's win. Not whether he'll win.

We all know Obama needs to hold the Kerry states. If he does he gets 252 EV. The only possible state still in play, from the evidence I can see, is PA, and that looks like a long shot for McCain. So let's say Obama has those states wrapped up.

Then he needs only 18 more EV.

The most frequently mentioned 'red states' [are they really red any more?] that Obama seems to have control of are: Iowa, New Mexico, Colorado, Virginia, and Nevada. Assuming he can pick all these up he has an additional 39 EV.

Game over.

That's without any help from Ohio, Missouri, or Florida. So he wins without any of those. Nor does he 'need' North Carolina or any of the other states he's put in play this time around.

This has been the state of play for a while. The media keeps hyping polls that appear to have little meaning in this context. That's because they need to keep active. Meanwhile Obama has run a remarkably effective and strategically sound campaign. The strategy is now firmly played out. He has reached his end game which is twofold: keeping McCain on the defensive, and getting out the vote. He has enough votes to win if everyone turns out.

So all this daily poll watching is a side show for us ... it keeps us occupied while the final days of the Reagan/Bush era slide into history.

Nothing I have said here is new! We just need to keep repeating it while we watch breathless news reports of 'poll tightening' and 'battleground states'.

Still I suppose we all need to keep our fingers crossed or whatever we all do in times of self induced panic/paranoia. We wouldn't be Democrats if we didn't panic would we?

Hey my fellow warrior worriers, if you want to rest easier, keep this in mind - at this point in '04, Bush had a 7 point lead in the polls in MO.

(If you all want some nifty eye candy, go to http://www.electoral-vote.com. Click the "This day in 2004" link to compare the current national map with that of the same period in '04. You can click on any state for comparison. It's a 'purty' picture).

Missouri will be interesting to watch but it might be all over before our votes are counted. The bible-thumpers will turn out in droves in Springfield (the land of Ashcroft and the Blunts). I would expect to see thousands of people trying to vote in St. Louis when the polls close at 7 PM and there will be the usual pushing and shoving about closing the polls. Kansas City already has ACORN complaints so that could be interesting, too. St. Louis, Kansas City and Columbia should go for Obama but McCain owns much of the rest of the state. The suburbs often go Republican but that might be where we see the real struggle. If McCain can't carry the suburbs he has no hope. We have a fair and Democratic Secretary of State who will be on top of the voting process. The Governor's race looks like it will easily go to the Democrats (Jay Nixon) but I live in a "red" area and can't gauge that race very well except that I'm seeing a lot of Nixon signs.

Was recently back in MO to the town in which I went to grade and high school, population 1,200. I was pleasantly surprised to see an equal number of Obama and McCain signs through the town. In addition, in the space of a couple hours worth of shopping I observed three inter-racial couples and had an openly gay cashier at one store. So, it seems there have been some demographic changes for the better in what I once considered the most ass-backward place on earth. And it is these changes that probably best explain the equal split between the Obama and McCain signs.

As to the general discussion here. I expect MO to go Obama by 3 - 5 points based upon the polling we have been seeing. Until the various pollsters figure out how to better measure folks with cell phones only and young, first-time voters, the pollsters are going to undercount Obama voters and overcount McCain voters. I recently read an online article which presented very persuasive evidence of Obama being undercounted in polls by about 3%.