The national tracking polls (on their faces) seem to be tightening significantly (or at least were until yesterday), throwing all of us into a semiparanoid tizzy. We can't contemplate the slightest chance that the GOP: will continue to run our country into the ground with any equanimity at all. It just isn't funny..........
However, there is a very hopeful factor that we should consider before we ask our shrinks to prescribe us his favorite phenothiazine - or cyanide.
I noticed that if you assume Obama wins all of the states that he currently has 90% win probability or better (as per 538), he gets 286 EV and a clear (if not resounding) win. How can he be within 5% on national polls - i.e. well within the sampling error range of most polls and by no means a done deal?
This question is being asked by many nervous Dems (including me) and it occurred to me that there is likely a simple (and reassuring) explanation. I'm surprised that Nate at 538 http://www.fivethirtyeight.com didn't mention it explicitly in his post on this subject (do state polls lag national polls?). He DID say that it isn't because the state polls are just late and irrelevant.....its because the "tightening" is due to undecided GOPers coming home.
I think this is happening because:
- GOPers who were reluctant to vote for Dem Bums this time are starting to hold their noses
- The states that are being polled (and those that matter) have relatively few Republican undecideds
- The national poll "tightening" is occurring mostly within the deep Red states, where most GOPers reside
This seems evident when you look at the "win probability" of most of the Red states as calculated by Nate - they have gone down for Obama significantly over the past week, and have taken states like IN and WV (but not GA, ND and MT) with them.
If you take Nate's calculations at face value, we should continue working hard, but we shouldn't fear suckerpunching by a GOP wave over the weekend - Dishonest John's potential gains will be expended on bouncing the rubble of Obama's chances in the deepest and whitest corners of Jesusland - a place where Obama never really had much of a shot anyway.