Re: [Marxism] Is Obama toast this time? Will our clueless criticfinally get to butter him?

["Joaquin Bustelo" <jbustelo@xxxxxxxxx>]

"Ruthless" quotes Pew chieftain Andrew Kohut: 

"One of the more surprising twists in a surprising year is that despite the
obvious Republican disadvantages in this election cycle, John McCain is
matching up pretty well against Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in tests
being conducted by national polls. Pew Research Center and CBS/New York
Times polls show Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton holding only modest leads over
Mr. McCain, while other national surveys ? notably Associated Press/Ipsos
and NBC/Wall Street Journal ? have Mr. McCain running about even against the
Democratic candidates."

While Andrew Kohut is generally regarded as an expert and conscientious
pollster, he is NOT making the point "Ruthless" seems to have in mind --
that "Obama is toast now." This far ahead of a general election, polls on
their outcome aren't all that meaningful. 

Kohut's point was rather that Mrs. Clinton's "electability" argument was
bullshit. In his own poll, with a 3,000+ sample size (necessary to make
medicine about things like this), he found Obama ran 3% stronger in the big
swing states (OH, FL, MI and PA) than Mrs. Clinton (a 12 percentage point
advantage over McCain compared to Clinton's 9), in smaller swing states (a 3
percentage point lead over McCain as opposed to a 3 point lead by McCain
over Clinton, a six point swing) and marginally better in traditional
Democrat states (a 20 point lead over McCain rather than Mrs. Clinton's 19
point lead). Overall McCain lost by 7% to Obama and 6% to Clinton.

If you stop to think about an electoral outcome in November reflecting these
numbers, it would be proclaimed a Democratic Party landslide, as once you
factor out the undecideds, Obama's margin will become 8-9%, or Clinton's 7%
or more. Obama certainly would achieve an electoral College majority before
polls closed in California, and his "coattails" would bring in a
significantly larger Democrat majority in the House and probably help pick
up a few Senate seats also. That because of his strength in the "swing"
states

Kohut's argument that McCain is running "pretty well" simply hewes to the
time-honored journalistic tradition of pretending every race worth covering
in really, really close, a heart-stopping cliff-hanger and so on. Kohut's
OWN numbers --among the best, if not the very best in the business-- show
reality is otherwise. If the voting had just been held, it's McCain that
would have been toast, even against Mrs. Clinton, and absolutely so against
Obama.

Joaquín


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