There's been an awful lot of hand-wringing around here the past few days as John McCain has moved back into a tie or gained some leads within the margin of error. The "oh noes!" and "OMG's!" were in all corners of the Big Orange. People, I'm telling you right now:
The national polls don't matter.
In 2000 and 2004, Democrats made the huge mistake of concentrating fire in a few small areas and watching the national polling with an eagle eye. We kept our eye off the ball in other important areas, areas we could've possibly swung with some effort. The Bush campaign, both times, had this right: they put massive effort into the ground game and beat us on the ground.
This year, Barack Obama has learned that lesson, and learned it well.
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Everyone loves to be a critic, to yell, "Hit harder!" We love to sit here and say what we'd do, because we're so afraid of the repeats of the Gore and Kerry campaigns. The difference is, though, that this time the Washington insiders and consultants aren't running this campaign. The two Davids, Plouffe and Axelrod, are statewide campaign veterans, and they know to win a state, it's ALL about ground game. They've applied this lesson in a whole new way to the whole nation.
Let's look at a few statistics.
Offices opened in North Dakota by Obama: 12. This is a state Bush won by 28 points, yet Obama is contesting it heavily. McCain, in contrast, hasn't opened one. Not even trying. No Democrat has won there since LBJ, yet Obama has opened 12 offices for a total of three electoral votes. This is the Dean strategy in full effect.
In Virginia, a major battleground this year, 150,000 new voters were registered by the Obama campaign. That's a huge deal, a game-changing amount. We've seen 70,000 signed up in Louisiana, and if these numbers are being repeated in other southern states, it will force McCain to spend more of his precious money there, keeping it out of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, etc.
In Colorado, another Bush state that is rapidly going blue, McCain dumped a lot of money pre-convention there, yet Obama is still leading. Here in Michigan, McCain ads have been all over, plastering our television sets, sometimes twice in one commercial break, yet Obama still holds a three-point lead here.
These are just a few facts within the large picture, but instead of thinking big picture, the Obama campaign is thinking how to count to 270, and by challenging in as many places as possible, they make it easier to get there. Losing Ohio, for instance, would hurt, but wouldn't kill them if they took Virginia and Colorado away from McCain. It'd break even. To get there, Plouffe and Axelrod know a couple of things. First, Obama, by not choosing public financing, can afford these efforts where McCain, limited by that public financing, can't. Secondly, McCain got a boost because he had to blow his pre-convention fundraising in two months or he lost it, so he dumped it into scattershot, mocking ads that didn't move the barometer a whole lot.
Finally, though, and this is crucial: From here until November 4, Obama can outspend McCain in huge numbers. He can flat-out bury him in battleground states, and in states like a North Dakota, where spending is cheap, he can run ads and build a ground game (remember, 12 field offices to zero) that can make all the difference. Right now, the last poll (8/23-8/27) shows a three-point Obama lead in a state that Bush won by 28 points. That's a 31-point swing from Republican to Democrat. In states like Virginia and North Carolina, where McCain's lead is two-three points, within the margin of error, Obama has had massive new registration of voters, and those new registrants aren't polled. That is a critical point to understand. Because these new people aren't polled, they represent a bloc of voters that can erase and overcome a margin of error deficit that exists in a poll. The polls are not truly reflective of facts on the ground, and a national poll can say what it wants, but if it oversamples in a red state, for instance, it gives McCain an artificially large lead, the same way that oversampling a blue state can give Obama a big artificial lead (the 15-point Newsweek outlier from a couple of months ago, for instance).
I believe that McCain, because of his limited checkbook, does not have the money to beat the Obama ground game, and as a result, is playing the Kerry game from four years ago to hold what they have while trying to pick off a couple of battlegrounds, as Bush did with Ohio and Florida. He's bet big on Pennsylvania so far, and gotten nothing in return, as Obama has a solid lead there. He's using a lot of advertising and 527's to make up for this deficit, but it only matters if voters get to the polls. He certainly has taken a beating amongst independents in polling (this is why reading a poll's full results is important) and those are the people he needs to win.
In short, this is still Obama's election to win or lose. He has the superior ground game this time around, superior money, and for those who are questioning, well, no one thought he could beat the Clinton machine either. Plouffe and Axelrod are two proverbial pros from Dover. They have an excellent strategy, and as we saw with the new Obama ad (see end), they are doing something previous Democratic campaigns haven't done: calling it as it is. Since the in-your-face convention speech, they've been calling the liars by that name, mocking their "maverick" tag, using the facts in a hard-hitting way. So, we need to stop sitting here and questioning two people who haven't lost yet, unlike the Bob Shrums of the world, and do our part. For myself, as soon as I get my work situation settled, I'm going to head down to my local office and start canvassing on off days. I will be donating again this week. I will be working as an precinct inspector again this year. I'll be doing my part, and I hope you do the same. Stop fretting over national polls and start making a difference in the only place that matters: on the ground in your state.