TPM Track Composite: Obama's Lead Grows Again
Here's our daily composite of the six major national tracking polls. Barack Obama's already-big lead has inched up again:
• Gallup: Obama 51%, McCain 45%, with a ±2% margin of error, compared to a 52%-44% Obama lead yesterday.
• Rasmussen: Obama 52%, McCain 45%, with a ±2% margin of error, compared to a 51%-45% Obama lead from yesterday.
• ABC/Washington Post: Obama 54%, McCain 43%, with a ±2.5% margin of error, unchanged from yesterday.
• Hotline/Diageo: Obama 48%, McCain 43%, with a ±3.4% margin of error, compared to a 47%-42% Obama lead from yesterday.
• Research 2000: Obama 51%, McCain 41%, with a ±3% margin of error, unchanged from yesterday.
• Zogby: Obama 52%, McCain 40%, with a ±2.9% margin of error, compared to a 52%-42% Obama lead yesterday.
Adding these polls together and weighting them by the square roots of their sample sizes, Obama is ahead 51.5%-43.1%, a lead of 8.4 points, compared to the 51.3%-43.1% Obama lead from yesterday.
I really don't know if I can take this - we're going to win this election.
I can't breathe when I realize that. This is the part about being a Democrat that is just hell - at this point if this was McLame, every Repug in the country would be in our faces right now crowing about their victory.
We'll be walking around for days in shock after he's won.
October 23, 2008 5:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
steady as she goes.
October 23, 2008 5:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
I wrote this yesterday: It's like it's almost Christmas, and it looks like there's a new bike wrapped up under the tree.
But my abusive parents have given me boxes of shit on the last two Christmases. So, emotionally crippled, I can't help but suspect that it's a bike made of shit.
October 23, 2008 5:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Now you know what it's like to be a Phillies fan right now. (Though admittedly, with just a 1-0 lead, they could much more easily lose the Series than Obama could lose the election.)
October 23, 2008 5:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Better to be a Phillies fan than a Mets fan...
October 23, 2008 5:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, like that.
October 23, 2008 5:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is the funniest thing I've read in a while. Well done.
October 23, 2008 6:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
You know your right. We don't really have the luxury of being too giddy right now. I honestly want to believe it will happen, but I just can't be disappointed like that. I and more than half of America would have a cow.
My chest hurts just thinking about it. I hope people are voting early. I’ll be voting before 11/4 for sure.
October 23, 2008 5:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Now you know what it was like in 2004 to be a Red Sox Fan.
October 23, 2008 5:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
Honestly? I tell anyone who asks me about the election that Obama is going to win.
No gloating, no getting in anyone's face. But I make sure they know that I believe a Democrat will be sitting in the White house on January 20, 2009.
No brag. just fact. :)
October 23, 2008 5:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Great! But let's keep flooring it until the polls close November 4th.
October 23, 2008 5:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
From POLITICO.com:
Fake America located
In tonight's NBC News interview with Brian Williams, McCain explains that the "elites" are located in D.C. and New York City:
WILLIAMS: Who is a member of the elite?
PALIN: Oh, I guess just people who think that they're better than anyone else. And-- John McCain and I are so committed to serving every American. Hard-working, middle-class Americans who are so desiring of this economy getting put back on the right track. And winning these wars. And America's starting to reach her potential. And that is opportunity and hope provided everyone equally. So anyone who thinks that they are-- I guess-- better than anyone else, that's-- that's my definition of elitism.
WILLIAMS: So it's not education? It's not income-based? It's--
PALIN: Anyone who thinks that they're better than someone else.
WILLIAMS: --a state of mind? It's not geography?
PALIN: 'Course not.
WILLIAMS: Senator?
MCCAIN: I-- I know where a lot of 'em live. (LAUGH)
WILLIAMS: Where's that?
MCCAIN: Well, in our nation's capital and New York City. I've seen it. I've lived there. I know the town. I know-- I know what a lot of these elitists are. The ones that she never went to a cocktail party with in Georgetown. I'll be very frank with you. Who think that they can dictate what they believe to America rather than let Americans decide for themselves.
UPDATE: Numerous readers in those cities note that they were the targets on 9/11.
October 23, 2008 5:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Wow.
October 23, 2008 5:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Palin's ridiculous ignorance over the meaning of the word "elite" is stunning.
Governor Palin? The word you're looking for is "snob".
October 23, 2008 5:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
I heard two things on NPR:
1. Voters who have mailed in their ballots using a 42 cent stamp will have their votes counted in CA. Apparently, the ballot takes more than a regular stamp to mail.
2. The evangelical vote (10%) is not going to carry McCain as it did Bush, because abortion and gay marriage are not critical issues to evangelical voters as they were in 2004. Also, the evangelicals are failing to influence main line christians and catholics.
So, there's another spoonful of hope for all of you.
October 23, 2008 6:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
I have a CA absentee ballot and it has prepaid postage.
October 23, 2008 7:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Way to go, John. The days are dwindling down to a precious few, and you just blew another news cycle.
October 23, 2008 5:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think it's best we honor McCain's wishes and make sure he's nowhere near all those elites in Washington.
October 23, 2008 5:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
PALIN: Anyone who thinks that they're better than someone else.
Isn't the whole point of advertising and marketing (and campaigning, even), to demonstrate that you are, in fact, better than someone else? Hell, she herself thinks she's better than Barack Obama. She even said so in the same goddamn interview.
Palin really has spent way too much time in her self-imposed bubble. I fully expect these gems to make their way into a Daily Show Moment of Zen.
October 23, 2008 5:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hell of a line from McShame who's been to more Georgetown cocktail parties than he can count.
October 23, 2008 5:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
And truly breathtaking, coming from the same campaign that tells northern Virginians that they aren't REAL Virginians.
October 23, 2008 6:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Holy scheit! It's a gaffe made in heaven.
By the way, this from CBS: McCain will not likely attend his own election night party:
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2008/10/23/politics/horserace/entry4541674.shtml?tag=rightRail;rightRailInner
October 23, 2008 5:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Toasted Elite Twins! Sequestered for the night.
October 23, 2008 5:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sounds like mcShame to me! Palin too!
October 23, 2008 5:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Since I live in DC, I guess I better change the title on my business card to "Elitist."
I was also here on September 11. I heard the plane hit the Pentagon. I was working 2 blocks from the White House when word came in (incorrectly as it turned out) that multiple planes were headed right towards us. I remember being told to, "get the hell out of downtown, now!"
I also remember my family begging me to leave DC after 9/11. I remember my friend's families saying the same thing. Not one of us left. Even though we knew we were likely ground zero for any future attack, most of us were here to work for the country and no fucking terrorist was going to scare us away.
So FUCK YOU Palin. FUCK YOU McCain for even daring to suggest that we're elitists and somehow lesser Americans. We're in the ones in the crosshairs here. Al Qaeda isn't striking the World's Largest Prairie Dog in Kansas any time soon.
Assholes...
October 23, 2008 5:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Al Qaeda isn't striking the World's Largest Prairie Dog in Kansas any time soon.
THANK GOD! If they ever did, I don't how I'd mark the time on my drives between the the Colorado Front Range and Kansas City. It turns out to be almost exactly halfway between my home and my relatives.
Although, if they ever do blow it up, I'd pay a dollar to watch.
October 23, 2008 5:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
So, do those prairie dogs belong to Fake America?
October 23, 2008 6:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
The FAKE prairie dog is made of REAL concrete, so I'm not sure how to answer your question.
They also have a two-headed snake and a 6-legged steer. Those are real. Real freaky, but real.
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/11444
October 23, 2008 6:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
reminds me of the world's largest cross near Amarillo, TX.
October 23, 2008 6:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
I hate that damn thing. I'm originally from Colorado and whenever I used to drive to/from there, I came to dread all the annoying signs saying "World's Largest Prairie Dog XXX in miles." These damn signs start well over 100 miles away!
It's the Kansas equivalent of "South of the Border" on I-95 out east.
October 23, 2008 6:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Eh. I've grown used to them. My wife and I do that drive at least once a year, sometimes twice. It's a drudgery, but you need those landmarks to keep you from going crazy.
Like all the signs for the hometowns of astronauts, or Bob Dole/Arlen Specter. Or the huge sign for the Porn Palace right off I-70, surrounded by billboards put up by the local churches pleading with you not to go in.
October 23, 2008 6:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm with you. Only one possible reply to McShame from this NYer:
FUCK YOU you fuckin' fuck.
October 23, 2008 6:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Al Giordano wrote this morning that this kind of crap is playing into Obama's hands, setting up the closing message he'll deliver in his prime-time half-hour next Wednesday...which is likely to be the same basic message he introduced himself to the nation with at the 2004 convention.
And in praise of Obama's constancy: "He'll land in his boyhood home of Hawaii today and be able to look himself in the mirror of his grandmother's eyes and know that to his own self he's been true."
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/full-circle
October 23, 2008 5:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Only one possible reply to McShame from this NYer:
FUCK YOU you fuckin' fuck.
October 23, 2008 6:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
Doh doh! Damn internodes.
October 23, 2008 6:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Republicans have been stirring up class divides and racism for decades. It's ugly and appeals to the least informed people. It can't work forever though because it's incredibly corrosive and isn't working to win elections anymore.
The Republican party is being forced to adapt or go extinct. Perhaps the GOP will CHANGE their mascott to picture a cave man walking a dinosaur on a leash.
October 23, 2008 7:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
But, but, but, the AP poll sez...
LOL!
October 23, 2008 5:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Jon Stewart already made that extremely clear. I don't know if you saw him but he told Sarah Fuck You and the next night he amended it to include her supporters - and said Fuck Y'all.
LOL!
I heard some jackass up in Alaska, I think, maybe on TDS, claiming that he had more intimate ties to 9-11 than the people in New York did cause he was a true Islamofascist/commie-hatin Amurika lovin Amurkin, by god!
October 23, 2008 5:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yup! Daily Show segment with Jason Jones. A guy who lives about 4,000 miles from NYC says 9/11 affected small towns like his more than the big cities.
Cuz that's where all the real Merkins live.
October 23, 2008 5:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
You do realize what a merkin is, no? They are fake by definition.
October 23, 2008 6:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's spelled muurkinz' you damn elitist!!!
October 23, 2008 6:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
John Stewart is dead on here.
October 23, 2008 5:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
Unless this person is a veteran; if a similar asshole ever says this to my face, I'm likely to knock their teeth in.
This REALLY pisses me off.
October 23, 2008 5:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
They are circling the drain!
I just dropped off my early voting paper ballot in Jefferson County, Colorado. Then, I can track it online to be sure they have received it.
October 23, 2008 5:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Mmmm, Eric?
I really think you need to start including the Nickelodeon Poll. Jim Geraghty at NRO tells me it's really quite significant.
October 23, 2008 5:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, Eric....why do you hate the children?
October 23, 2008 5:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Folks, it's encouraging, but let's not start counting chickens just yet.
October 23, 2008 5:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Now I'm REALLY curious as to what kind of October Surprise the GOP will drop four days before the election...keep in mind that the White House and Pentagon are still SUPPOSEDLY sitting on a new Bin Laden tape! That's from a MSNBC report from a few weeks ago, but I haven't heard anything on it since.
Desperation for GOP - celebration for Democrats!
October 23, 2008 5:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
I asked you for a link to a published report about that supposed report when you first brought it up, and I'm still waiting.
October 23, 2008 5:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
I just said above it was something on MSNBC - I saw it a few weeks ago. Said the same thing to your request the first time you asked. It was on tv, not print.
October 23, 2008 5:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
St. Petersburg Times/Bay News 9/Miami Herald FL poll: Obama 49 McCain 42
http://blogs.tampabay.com/buzz/2008/10/times-poll-obam.html
October 23, 2008 5:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
JOE THE PLUMBER JOE THE PLUMBER JOE THE PLUMBER JOE THE PLUMBER JOE THE PLUMBER!!!
What, you mean that's not working? Oh well, back to the drawing board, AGAIN.
October 23, 2008 5:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
I totally agree with DOOFUS - celebrate AFTER the results are in!
Every vote counts!!
October 23, 2008 5:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank Gawd for this ticket. Gold, Jerry, GOLD!
October 23, 2008 5:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ohh dear!!!!
The Polls ARE tightening!!!!!!!!!!!!
But only from the perspective of the anti-universe from the old STAR TREK eppie where everything was reversed!!!!!
I;m sure Dems in THAT universe are beside themselves today.
October 23, 2008 5:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
There's a part of me that is actually happy the polls are tightening - this makes voters who thought it was in the bag for Obama want to come out to vote for him in even bigger droves.
Again, every vote counts! Predictions are not votes!
October 23, 2008 5:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Chicago:
Actually, I echo your position.
I do not WANT a 15-point Obama lead with over a week to go. I want Obama supporters to WORRY about the final result - and therefore get out there and VOTE - and not stay home because they think it is 'in the bag'.
October 23, 2008 5:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
NOBODY IS GOING TO BLOW OFF VOTING IN THIS ELECTION!
sorry to yell, but that's the truth.
October 23, 2008 5:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Tena:
I dont think so either - but I don't want there to be ANY metric that encourages slacking off in the final 11 days. :)
October 23, 2008 6:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree with the sentiment completely and I understand the worry - people do get complacent.
But I've never seen such attention paid to an election in my life and I don't think getting the voters to turnout is going to be a problem. Getting their votes counted might continue to be, but I swear the Obama Camp has that covered, too, it seems. They certainly have enough volunteer lawyers covering the country, from what I have read.
October 23, 2008 6:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sing it out loud!
I have also never seen such enthusiasm.
Just the early voting should tell us that.
October 23, 2008 6:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry, been away from TPM comments for a couple of days, and I just felt like singing.
October 23, 2008 6:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Jesus H!
How desperate are the Republicans?? Here's a pretty good idea!
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/10/23/rove-market-obama/
October 23, 2008 5:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Karl, don't let the fact that the economy and the stock market both do better under Democratic presidents get in the way of your depserate partisan hackery.
October 23, 2008 5:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think Jon Stewart got it right...
Wait'll Osama Bin Ladin finds out he bombed the wrong America!
October 23, 2008 6:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am filling up the spare space in my head with just four words:
GET OUT THE VOTE!!!
October 23, 2008 6:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Can I please get y'all to see that a big lead is very good for us because the bigger it is the less able they are to steal it from us? And it causes undecideds to jump on the bandwagon~!!!!!
So this far ahead right now - rocks!
How can anyone complain about this? No one is going to blow off voting in this election, dammit. Not this one.
October 23, 2008 6:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Really good point. There is very much to be gained from a BIG win and we may be seeing one in process. Switching the motivation of those involved in the ground game from "we need to win" to "we want to win by as big a margin as possible" might help keep motivation high even if the polling data continues to look so promising. Every Obama-Biden vote counts, for down-ticket candidates and for governance.
October 23, 2008 6:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
O I think so and I don't anyone is willing to leave this one up to chance.
Either they are royally pissed at the Republicans, or they really love Obama - and that's most of it, I think.
He's not Kerry - people really want to vote for this man.
October 23, 2008 6:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh, there will be some who blow it off, but not enough to matter. Just look at all the beautiful blue in that map. McCain can win all the red states, all the tossup states AND all the light blue states AND HE'D STILL LOSE. And he knows it. His only strategy left is to try not to get embarrassed. But really, the man obviously has no shame, so that shouldn't be a problem anyway.
October 23, 2008 6:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
According to the BBC here in London, Scott McClellan, former Bush mouthpiece and general flunky has announced he's voting for Obama...geez, I guess you don't need to be a Bill Ayres to know which way the wind blows...
October 23, 2008 6:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
McCain is probably pleading with Bush to endorse Obama about now too....it's his only hope.
October 23, 2008 6:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
He's been working full-time to cleanse his image, hasn't he? I guess we could just be nice and make it easier for him: Welcome back from the dark side, Scott.
October 23, 2008 6:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Although we do sincerely appreciate your endorsement here, Scotty .... NO, you can't be Press Secretary for Obama.
October 23, 2008 6:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
lol Remember just how sad it was to watch the little feller stumble through conference after conference? At one point it seemed to be the thing that defined the administration best.
October 23, 2008 6:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
LMAO!
Of the press secretaries, Scotty is the only one who really has scruples. He quit because the White House made him a liar on the Plame case and he really felt badly about it.
I remember that press conference very well and Scotty was so chagrinned. I don't think he'll ever forgive Karl Rove.
October 23, 2008 6:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah...he wrote a book, didn't he...it caused a bit of a stink at the time with McClellan's revelations, (revelations! Ha!), that Bush was basically a knuckle-head surrounded by mendacious creeps.
The way things are going, the only people in the whole country that will end up voting for McSlime will be Joe the Bogus Tax-Dodging Non-Plumber and Tod Palin...
October 23, 2008 7:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah...he wrote a book, didn't he...it caused a bit of a stink at the time with McClellan's revelations, (revelations! Ha!), that Bush was basically a knuckle-head surrounded by mendacious creeps.
The way things are going, the only people in the whole country that will end up voting for McSlime will be Joe the Bogus Tax-Dodging Non-Plumber and Tod Palin...
October 23, 2008 7:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Eric's falling down on the job
I read at Politico that Obama's opened a 49-42 lead in a poll out of Tampa
October 23, 2008 6:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Florida will be close, but we will come out on top. I admit I didn't believe that all summer until about 2 weeks ago when poll after poll came out in O's favor. The groundgame their is potent and we can come out on top for sure.
October 23, 2008 7:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Watching the McSame surrogates on MSNBC (former Gov. Erlich from MD and Tom Ridge from PA) desperately hang onto the now-discredited AP Poll 1-point difference poll from yesterday and Joe the Plumber (a now known right-winger who failed to pay his taxes and who does not make enough to be taxed under Obama's tax plan!). I've never seen Tom Ridge look and sound so pathetic, grasping at straws. Great news!
October 23, 2008 7:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm surprised it didn't come earlier, and that Republicans were crazy enough to actually take their ridiculous ideologies, from laissez faire to US exceptionalism to unconstrained cold war militancy, to their predictably catastrophic logical conclusions. Even when it was clear since 2000-2002 they were digging us deep into every hole they possibly could.
You can fool some people sometimes, but you can't fool all the people all the time.
What the GOP has represented for decades, from magical laissez faire thinking (with complicity from some triangulating Democrats too) to agressive FP, colonialism, and nation building at gunpoint, to pandering to anti-intellectualism and fundamentalism in the US, has now failed wholly.
Reaping what they sowed.
The present day GOP was a party formed in large part in reaction to the Cold War, red scares, secularism, militarism, xenophobia, etc.
It may have been Gorbachev who remarked "the worst thing the Soviets ever did to the US was to [collapse and thus] deny them an enemy."
October 23, 2008 7:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
We can't get complacent. We need to be on guard both against Republican voter suppression and Diebold/Premier and ES&S vote machine fraud. And we need to continue pressuring our local and state governments to get rid of these insecure, hackable weapons of mass destruction against our democracy.
Last time the only battleground state where the exit polling and the final vote closely matched one another was Wisconsin -- in every other battleground state there was a shift to the Republicans outside the margin of error. Some states with past vote-rigging incidents like Ohio have significantly reformed, while others, like Florida, have only partially fixed their system and still others, like Georgia, have done nothing at all.
October 23, 2008 7:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent points. Another question is whether the traditional under-reporting of Republican turnout (usually due to fundamentalists and evangelicals turning out stronger than expected by pollsters) is more than offset by the increase in Democratic voters and especially African-American voters in this election.
I heard one theory about Jim Webb's win over George "Maccaca" Allen last year that goes beyond just the Maccaca moment: There was a horrible initiative on the ballot in Virginia last year re: marriage should only be between a man and woman. That helped bring out additional African-American voters who voted for the initiative and for Webb. Or so the theory goes.
October 23, 2008 8:20 PM | Reply | Permalink