Obama has a solid lead at this point, probably something like 8 points (a little more than the tracking polls which I think favor McCain a couple of points, like they favored Clinton in the primary). But this lead is likely to go down by a couple of points in the next couple of days.
Tonight you will see Mitt Romney attack Obama, probably hard, you will see Giuliani and Huckabee as well. McCains "economy"-cards are Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, they are NOT strong cards regarding the economy. They are Wall-Street insiders, not economy-experts. But at the same time, they will probably attack hard and I expect a lot of people will try to paint Obama has a liberal "tax-raising" machine, and they probably will reach some swing-voters for the moment.
I don`t think Sarah Palin will speak for long but I think she will do a solid job and that some of the media-buzz probably will cool down. The bar is low and she will pass it without any problems, remember that other people are writing her speech and they know what they are doing.
So, we will have a full night with a lot of attack on Obama and full coverage on TV. This will probably affect both Obamas favorable-rating (which is very high at the moment) and his support, probably with indys. Tomorrow we will see McCain give his acceptance speech, the bar is low there as well but I expect him to do ok. All in all, they will have two days with a lot of coverage. Don`t be surprised if the race is tight in the tracking-polls on Saturday/Sunday.
But what I think could be most interesting is what happens on Friday? McCain played the VP-card, it worked well on Friday but backfired a during the following days. The Obama-campaign has been experts at releasing positive news at critical points (after Hillary-victories, controversy etc). I have three scenarios:
- They release the fundraising numbers for August, which would be quite impressing and will get a lot of the coverage on Friday.
- They will release info on Obama and Bill Clinton touring battleground-states, which will get a lot of coverage because people will talk about "100% unified" etc.
- The will get endorsements from prominent republicans or indys like Powell, Lugar or Hagel.
McCain will get a bounce, but I would be surprised if the Obama-camp didn`t have something up their sleeves to change the narrative on friday.