Marc Ambinder at The Atlantic wrote in a post about the many reasons (erm, excuses) as to why the McCain campaign team believes they'll pull it off on November 4th. I'll summarize it below, and then link to their full arguments:
- The Bradley Effect. (Seriously, they believe in it, and point to it as to why they could win Pennsylvania.)
- Historic voting patterns in red states won't change, and that the Republican turnout is much more reliable than the Democratic turnout.
- They'll spend $70 million in the final days.
- John Kerry also led in the early voting totals in states.
There you have it, the summary of their arguments. Here's the full list of their arguments below.
- The Republican Party has built a presidential election machine that is tested and proven, the argument begins. Its voter database, Voter Vault, has 150 million potential Republican voters listed, each with dozens of psychographic datums appended.
- The Party knows how to turn out Republican voters in red states. The Democratic Party has no record of turning out sporadic Democratic voters in presidential years in red states. It is not reasonable to assume, therefore, that Democrats can really turn out the voters they say they will, while Republicans have a record of turning out habitual Republican voters. How can Democrats build good and accurate voter lists in these red states?
- Take Indiana: Gov. Mitch Daniels leads his Democratic opponent, Jill Long Thompson, by a healthy margin. Can you imagine Mitch Daniels voters choosing Obama?
- Obama's in trouble in Pennsylvania. Why else is Ed Rendell begging Obama to return there?
- In 2006, the Republican base was depressed after "Macaca" and Jim Webb still only barely managed a victory there.
- The GOP will spend $70 million on GOTV in the next 13 days.
- Obama isn't breaking 50% in Ohio and Florida. It's hard to imagine a big shift to him in the final ten days, when the mind is concentrated, when imponderables come into play.
- Colorado is tough... but Pennsylvania is doable.
- Virginia, North Carolina, Indiana and Missouri will all revert to partisan form. Already, McCain's campaign has factored in census + 1 turnout for African Americans, and there are plausible scenarios under which McCain wins.
- Several polls -- including McCain's internal polls -- show that some white male voters who broke away from McCain [ed note: but did not support Obama] are coming back to McCain's fold.
- Oh, and all this talk of Barack Obama leading in the early vote? So did John Kerry.
And of course, the new battleground states polls out today would knock quite a few of these talking points down. It's all they have left to tell Republican donors so they can keep the money rolling in to the RNC.
Feel free to add your own thoughts to this in the thread below.