Obama and His Big Blue Paintbrush

Last night, Barack Obama won an election of tremendous historical and political significance. As an Obama supporter, I'm certainly very pleased with the victory as well as the positive reception his election has received around the world.

But my celebratory exterior belies the nerd within. I must have spent 18 out of the last 24 hours staring at that electoral map, trying to uncover the secrets behind Obama's lopsided drubbing of John McCain. Certainly, if you are one to believe the pre-election polling, this kind of performance was expected of Obama. In spite of these polling data, McCain's claims of a comeback and the so-called "Bradley Effect" left many on both sides of the aisle uncertain about what would happen on November 4th. As it turns out, the election went almost exactly according to the pre-election polling. Obama even stands to add icing to the cake if he wins either of the two remaining undecided races in Missouri and North Carolina.

So how did he do it? I'll save the hard analysis for another day, but studying the electoral map and comparing it to the 2004 election geography, some very telling facts arise that help tell the story of Obama's victory:

• If you give North Carolina to Obama and Missouri to McCain (as it appears it will go), Obama will end up winning 364 electoral votes, 94 more than is needed to win and 78 more than Bush's 286 electoral votes won in 2004. It is also 26 more than Karl Rove predicted.



• In addition to holding every blue state from 2004, Obama won nine states in 2008 that John Kerry lost: Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia.



• In addition to the newly acquired blue states, Obama pushed McCain in other traditionally red states. Obama got within ten percentage points of McCain in seven states carried by Bush in 2004: Missouri (-1 point), Montana (-3 points), Georgia (-5 points), North Dakota (-8 points), South Dakota (-8 points), Arizona (-9 points) and South Carolina (-9 points). Bush carried these states by an average of 16.3 points.



• In the 2004 "Bush States," Bush beat Kerry by an average margin of victory of 18.2 percent. In these same states in 2008, McCain beat Obama by an average of only 9.5 percent.



• Obama won his home state of Illinois by 25 points, while McCain won Arizona by only 9 points. (Obama also won his former home state of Hawaii by 45 points.)



• In 2004 Kerry won six states by 3 or fewer points: Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Obama won these same six states by an average of 12.3 points.



• Compared to Bush in 2004, McCain performed better in only two states, Louisiana and Arkansas. McCain did roughly the same in Alaska and Tennessee, and worse than Bush in the remaining 46 states.

Is there a landslide coming?

Tomorrow, in an event nearly two years in the making, Americans will finally elect their next President. The McCain campaign and the right wing media are attempting to interpret the most minute of polling fluctuations as McCain "closing the gap" on Barack Obama. The reality is that, while McCain is seeing a slight increase in support, so is Obama, a result of undecided voters solidifying their choice as November 4th approaches. The election analysis site fivethirtyeight.com currently gives Obama a 98.1% chance of winning. Pollster.com still has Obama leading comfortably in swing states of Colorado, Nevada, Ohio, Iowa, Pennsylvania and Virginia, and leading slightly in Florida, Missouri, North Dakota and North Carolina. CNN's Poll of Polls shows very similar findings. Fivethirtyeight.com projects Obama to win 340 electoral votes to McCain's 198. By Pollster.com estimates, McCain would need to win every toss up state and every blue leaning state to get the minimum 270 electoral votes needed to win.

That said, many are predicting a very tight race much like we saw in 2000 and 2004. Why do people still think McCain can win? As far as I can tell, there are really only three reasons anyone can still hold out hope for McCain:

1. The "Bradley Effect"

The much-publicized phenomenon named for former Los Angeles mayor and unsuccessful gubernatorial candidate Tom Bradley has been used as evidence of a possible unreliability of pre-election polling. The idea is that a social desirability bias exists among polling respondents, causing them to tell pollsters they intend to vote for a minority candidate when in fact they do not. Some believe this effect can make as much as a 6 percentage point difference, which could swing some Obama-leaning states over to McCain.

2. Undecided voters will vote McCain

There is an idea floating around that undecided voters will opt for McCain because he is seen as more experienced and less risky. Also, some undecideds actually represent "Bradley Effect" McCain voters who claim to be undecided so as not to appear negative to the ethnic minority candidate. While there may be some merit to that idea, it is probably not that significant an edge for McCain, and the undecided voters currently only make up 3-4% of respondents polled. Even if the undecideds go for McCain 2 to 1, that only represents 2-3 percentage points, not enough to tip the balance in his favor in critical swing states.

3. GOP election-day shenanigans

Rolling Stone recently published an article detailing the GOP strategy to suppress to vote. Stricter voter registration laws will no doubt result in many eligible voters being turned away at the polls due to ID issues, typos and technicalities. The long lines that plagued many Democratic-leaning precincts in 2004 have already been an issue in early voting locations. Add to that Republican voter intimidation campaigns, phony claims of voter fraud, and voting machine "glitches," and it's easy to see why Republicans like McCain's chances despite polling data to the contrary.


Do I believe these things will have an effect on the election? Absolutely. Do I think they will tip the election in McCain's favor? Not by a long shot. In fact, I tend to believe Obama will win by pretty much the same margins the polls are predicting, if not more. For every election day unknown that benefits McCain, there is an equally compelling unknown working in Obama's favor:

A. Cellphone-only households.

Public opinion surveys, while often very reliable, do not take into account households (like mine) that have no land line telephone. Paul Maslin, Salon.com contributor and partner at the public opinion firm Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin & Associates, noted that cellphone-only voters made up 7.1% of all voters in 2004. That number is likely to be much higher this year. So why does this help Obama? Because this demographic is more highly represented by young adults, minorities and the poor, all more likely to vote for Obama. Maslin suggests that the cellphone-only factor will likely give Obama an additional 2% to 4% boost nationwide. That is roughly equivalent to the percentage of undecideds McCain hopes will swing to his side.

B. The Enthuisiasm Gap

While survey firms usually only include data of "likely voters," not all likely voters are created equal. In a recent ABC News/Washington Post Poll, 63% of Obama supporters were "very enthusiastic" about their candidate. Only 29% of McCain supporters felt that way about the GOP candidate. One can fairly safely assume that the more enthusiastic a voter is for his/her candidate, the more like he/she is to actually vote for that candidate. Assuming the polling data are correct, Obama supporters are simply more likely to get to the polls than McCain supporters. Not only does enthusiasm increase voter turnout among the enthused, it also has the beneficial side effect of generating a massive volunteer staff, as the Obama campaign has done. Not only will Obama enthusiasts get to the polls, they will get others to the polls. Even with the addition of Sarah Palin to pander to the Evangelical Republican base, support for McCain-Palin remains tepid when compared to Obamamania.

Looking at the electoral map, McCain needs to win several states where Obama currently holds leads of 5 to 10 percentage points (Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Virginia and Nevada). The Bradley Effect, undecided voters and GOP vote suppression will certainly have an impact. The problem for McCain is that that impact will likely be offset and then some by the turnout of cellphone-only voters and Obama enthusiasts. I believe factors A and B to be much more influential than factors 1, 2 and 3. So for McCain to win, he would essentially need ALL THREE factors to happen and for factors A and B not to happen. This scenario is highly unlikely. More likely, in my opinion, is that Obama will actually beat pre-election polling numbers. McCain's factors can only account for a few percentage points here and there. In other words, there is a limit to how much these factors can actually benefit McCain. For Obama, the enthusiasm behind his candidacy and the massive Get Out the Vote campaign have the ability to drastically impact voter turnout. With voter turnout typically around 50-60% for presidential elections, there is a large amount of room for this to swing the vote in Obama's favor.

So, given that pre-election polling is historically very accurate and whatever undetectable advantages McCain has will likely be cancelled out by Obama's own untapped voting blocs, I am predicting a rather easy victory for the Obama-Biden ticket tomorrow. I won't go as far as to predict a landslide, because A) I'm not sure how to appropriately define "landslide" and B) it's not a good idea for someone who favors an Obama presidency to get complacent a day before the election. This will, however, be a large victory - and an historic one - for Barack Obama. Today, Monday, November 3, 2008, a man of mixed race and a Muslim-sounding name is poised to defeat the deep-pocketed, corporately-driven Republican smear machine. He is in this position in spite of widespread lies and distortions spread about him by his opponent, and a general campaign of fear and appeals to racism coming from the right.

Certainly 2008 has been set up for awhile as a good year for Democrats, with the embarrassing Bush presidency, an unpopular war and a floundering economy. This is precisely why this election can't be close. This election needs to be seen as a referendum on the Republican Party, and quite frankly, anything less than a blowout doesn't send a strong enough message. If McCain only loses by a few percentage points or a couple of dozen electoral votes, it shows that the GOP still has clout. It would show that despite inflicting endless war and reckless economic policies on the American taxpayer, many people still feel this type of leadership is appropriate.

So it's no secret that I'm hoping for (and predicting) a huge victory for Barack Obama. On Wednesday, McCain can go back to the Senate, Palin can return her wardrobe and disappear into the Alaskan wilderness, never to be heard from again.

Oh, and if Obama does win by a landslide, I imagine he'll get Stevie Nicks' permission first so as not to repeat the mistakes of the McCain campaign.

UPDATE:

Karl Rove is even predicting a big victory for Obama, 338-200 in the electoral college.