Every day I keep hearing - and keep an eye out - for the national polls. Now I'm just tired of it.
"WaPo has Obama up by 12."
"NYT has Obama up by 3."
"ABC has Obama up by 8."
(I'm just pulling these numbers out of the air.)
I can't hack it any longer. It means nothing to me, and should mean nothing to you, either.
The only thing that really matters are the numbers from state to state. Frankly, I follow the numbers from FiveThirtyEight.com. Simply for the fact that they pull stats from all over the place.
For Instance, what are the chances of Obama pulling off wins in the states in the New England region?
Well, basically he'll take it all - at least he should. But McCain, according to all the stats, has a 5% chance of taking New Hampshire. I know, it's a laugh fest, but that's a 5% chance that McCain can grab 4 electoral votes.
Let's look at the breakdown from FiveThirtyEight:
It looks good. Really good.
Further more, this is the way they break it down:
Great! Glad to see it!
But then I take a look at the NYT story "In McCain’s Uphill Battle, Winning Is an Option."
As Mr. McCain enters this closing stretch, his aides — as well as some outside Republicans and even a few Democrats — argue that he still has a viable path to victory.
“The McCain campaign is roughly in the position where Vice President Gore was running against President Bush one week before the election of 2000,” said Steve Schmidt, Mr. McCain’s chief strategist. “We have ground to make up, but we believe we can make it up.”
Yes, it's the longest of shots.
The biggest Hail Mary McCain's pulled this year.
So grab your buddy by the hand and drag them kicking and screaming to the polling station if need be. Don't take the, "But he's already gonna win!" excuse. It may well be true - but I don't want to take any chances.
I don't ever want to see 2000 ever again.