Pennsylvania minus three weeks

Another week, another Pennsylvania countdown thread. I owe Andrew Bolt a link, so see here for a revealing view of the Gallup poll trend as the Reverend Jeremiah Wright affair fades from view.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

1,141 comments on “Pennsylvania minus three weeks”

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  1. Ron, spin or no spin, if she wins Pennsylvania by only 6% and he wins North Carolina by the current RCP average of 17% then, even given the most optimistic of scenarios in the remaining primaries she’ll need over 70% of the remaining SDs. That would sure take some spin.

  3. HarryH @ 501 – [2 soundbites that will kill McCain in the campaign are his 100 year comment and the comment that he doesn’t know much about the economy.]

    I reckon John Cleese is working on those 2 little gems for Barack’s speeches already. I’m sure comparisons to the duration of the British Empire will be made, for a start.

  5. Robert , agree it would take alot of spin !

    But the SD’s should have already moved in bloc and haven’t partly one assumes because of some doubts about Obama’s electability. Politically they have to ‘live; with their decision. I have considerable electability doubts as well.
    however having said that , the pinzer movement of dropping uncommitted SD’s must be making them very uncomfortable.

    As to “A bloke called Sadr in Iraq will blow him out of the water by November rather than anyone in the Dems.’ That may be so. However he will judge that on his interests & maybe they include the current ‘chaotic’ status where a Democrat will get the US troops out giving him more licence rather than making the status ‘more chaotic’ & risk over playing his hand into the POTUS election.
    How can one read a mind like his

  7. One liner questions can be double edged. Everyone can retort.

    Given Senator Obama at Philly CONDEMNED Pastor Wrights anti American slurs yet sat silently for 20 years with alleged convictions disagreeing with those Pastor views, question:

    If Obama with his convictions can not stand up to a Pastor’s convictions ,
    how as POTUS is he going to stand up with his convictions for the American people ?

  9. Mornin’ Bludgers,

    Johnny Bomb-Bomb lets wife know who’s boss after a harrowing day on hustings.

    [Three reporters from Arizona, on the condition of anonymity, also let me in on another incident involving McCain’s intemperateness. In his 1992 Senate bid, McCain was joined on the campaign trail by his wife, Cindy, as well as campaign aide Doug Cole and consultant Wes Gullett. At one point, Cindy playfully twirled McCain’s hair and said, “You’re getting a little thin up there.” McCain’s face reddened, and he responded, “At least I don’t plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you c*nt.” McCain’s excuse was that it had been a long day. If elected president of the United States, McCain would have many long days.]
    http://rawstory.com/news/2008/McCain_temper_boiled_over_in_92_0407.html

    Johnny Bomb-Bomb’s hair-triggered, misogynistic over-reaction immediately recalled:

    “Kill The Badger

    At Los Alamos Ranch School, where they later made the atom bomb and couldn’t wait to drop it on the Yellow Peril, the boys are sitting on logs and rocks, eating some sort of food. There is a stream at the end of a slope. The counsellor was a Southerner with a politician’s look about him. He told us stories by the campfire, culled from the racist garbage of the insidious Sax Rohmer – East is evil, West is good.

    Suddenly a badger erupts among the boys – don’t know why he did it, just playful, friendly and inexperienced like the Aztec Indians who brought fruit down to the Spanish and got their hands cut off. So the counsellor rushes for his saddlebag and gets out his government issue Colt .45 and starts blasting at the badger…….”
    http://student.kuleuven.be/~s0110944/William%20Burroughs%20-%20Dead%20City%20Radio%20Lyrics.txt

  10. I don’t think what McCain actually said was about a 100 years war. I think (willing to be corrected) he referred to the possibility of Iraq becoming a situation like Germany, Japan and Korea – US bases being there for the best part of a century.
    Against Obama, however, the comment will hurt McCain, no matter what it actually was.

  12. GG,

    I would have thought you would be quicker to pick up on this SurveyUSA poll showing Clinton with an 18 point lead in PA.

    http://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollReport.aspx?g=c79e5bab-a424-49f6-86d6-50c61cf729b7

    Rather than just dismiss it is an outlier, which I’ll leave to other people to do, I think the differences between major polling companies is very strange at times. In Australia, as we have compulsory voting, I’d imagine that all polling companies would use similar selection criteria for the people they are polling (demographic selection etc.). I wonder if some of the key differences between polling agencies are due to demographic selection, with some polling agencies perhaps excluding many young voters who typically may not vote, but this election have been providing Obama with a lot of support. Similarly, Hillary receives increased support over previous elections from White Female voters, and the exclusion of some members of these demographics as not being “determined by SurveyUSA to be likely to vote in the Democratic Primary on 04/22/08” (or other polling agencies) may produce the large variation between polled and actual results, as well as significant differences between polling agencies.

  13. Morning all….

    The McCain things interesting to read, but fairly insignificant….
    I mean, the guy swears….seems a little much to be basing a book off that!

  14. ec @ 488
    Sadly, there 1972 date was CORRECT. The Hutu’s were massacring the Tutsi’s in Buranda back then. It was a warm up for Rwanda’s 800,000 person genocide in 100 days. 🙁

  16. 513: I wouldn’t get too excited about Survey USA polling – during this election cycle their polls have been so far off the mark it’s been embarrassing.

  17. Petraeus in search of the right metaphor, went through a few:

    (a) “We haven’t turned any corners.”
    (b) “We haven’t seen any lights at the end of the tunnel.”
    (c) “The champagne bottle has been pushed to the back of the refrigerator.”
    (d) “And the progress, while real, is fragile and is reversible.”

    …pretty good for a few trillion bucks and no discernable advantages of any description?

  18. Joe Biden puts it in perspective:

    He said “the risks of leaving Iraq are debatable” while the costs are known.

    – “We have spent less in six years in Afghanistan than we spend in three weeks in Iraq.”

    – He said the mission in Iraq has gone “from drowning to treading water,” and warned that “we can’t keep treading water without exhausting ourselves.”

    …and a recent report about escalating rates of mental illness in troops on constant Iraq rotation was proof of that last one.

  19. And this one really sums up the confusion, the irony, and the tragedy for the US:

    Senator Boxer of California had a question about hearts, minds and kisses. “After all we have done, the Iraqi government kisses the Iranian leader,” she said. “Our president has to sneak into the country.”

    …kinda cruel isn’t it? I mean Ahmadinejad gets the red carpet (outside the Green Zone), while Bush sneaks in under cover of darkness with a chopper into the (not so safe) Green Zone.

    Ouch!

  20. Claude, SurveyUSA hasn’t been that bad for most of the polling this election. I know it’s easy to dismiss a pollster if they produce a poll which seems strange. Their Ohio, California, Mass, NY and NJ predictions were all very close, and Noam Scheiber tries to interpret the latest SUSA poll over at the New Republic.

    http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_stump/archive/2008/04/08/obama-s-african-american-problem.aspx

    I did notice that while they were reporting the poll over at the neo-con National Review Online, they were taking it with a grain of salt. With polls that are so different to others, it’s easy to dismiss it as an outlier, but time will tell.

  21. SurveyUSA poll TODAY showing Clinton with an 18 point lead in PA.

    Will the Obamabots talk about this bad news. No , like Pastorgate just ignore it.

    I won’t. I think the Poll has grossly overstated Hillary’s lead , which highlights the difficulties faced with US Polling compared to ‘oz’.
    Take the US’s no compulsory voting.
    First problem is some pollsters push very hard for a voters preference decision , some don’t (will that voter even vote)
    Second problem is the total voter base. some pollsters work on previous elections. others work on estimates of the likely vote (generally judgemental)
    Third problem is demographics.Democrats generally vote for a different candidate (Obama vs HRC) depending on their demographic be it black to Latino , male to female , college educated to white poorer , young to older
    etc.

    Because of the above any pollster can get wrong badly
    However as SurveyUSA is one of the top US pollsters , sometimes its better to look at trends and averages between pollsters
    But even here SurvayUSA & Rasmussen (another top pollster often have opposite results ,meaning some supporters pick the one favouring their guy
    What the Primarys have shown is from approx a month out on each , Obama always narrows (for a variety of reasons) & Penns . is no different

    IF Hillary chooses to , she can take it all the way whilstever the uncommitted SD’s represent more than Obama’s delegate lead.
    Meanwhile , team McCain have probably already run out of computer space of negative quotable quotes of one Democrat candidate’s POTUS assessmentof the other , which will appear in later TV ads

  22. 516
    junior senator

    Obama and Clinton zero in on the very notion of what ‘progress’ or even ‘victory’ means in a place where the lack of political consensus is matched with a lack of basic services and security. It looks to me that even Pretraeus and Crocker agree, it ain’t going well, but of course neither of those two are in a position to define ultimate goals; they’re there to do a job. The ‘sucesses’ are small in compared with the costs.

    I haven’t watched the McCain clip yet, but I’ve seen a quote, more of the usual jingoism about onwards to victory, blah, blah.

    Both Democrats show they comprehend the scale of the debacle and realise that they cannot stay to establish Jeffersonian democracy, while McCain relies on the tired old waffle of the discredited neocons who got them into the mess in the first place.

    Given the Gallup poll yesterday which showed an overwhelming public mood for pulling out of Iraq, I don’t think the Democrats will lose any points over their position after this hearing.

  23. Ron,

    As one of the people who may now be classed as an “Obama-bot” (I initially didn’t care who won, but now that I want the race to end asap for the Dems to have the best chance in November, I lean toward Obama), I find your post baffling.

    “Will the Obamabots talk about this bad news. No , like Pastorgate just ignore it.”

    The Obamabots aren’t the only ones ignoring bad news. The Shrillarys are also pretty good at just looking at the facts that suit them.

    Put yourself in a white-collar Pennsylvania Democrat voters shoes. You don’t know a whole lot about the election race as you haven’t been paying attention to it all that much until now. You know that industry is struggling and lots of people are saying that is due to too many Free Trade Agreements. You hear from Hillary that she is opposed to any free trade deals, but then find out that Mark Penn has left her team (debatable whether he has actually left) after pushing for a free trade agreement with Colombia. I belive it has the potential to do as much damage in PA as the rumours regarding Obama’s advisors meeting with Canadian officials over NAFTA did to his numbers in Ohio. At this stage of the game, Clinton really needs to win PA by at least 20 pledged delegates (if not much more), and the last week or two of news has not been kind to Clinton.

  24. 524
    Al

    Just as an aside, isn’t it ironic that the biggest export from Columbia into the US is the powdered kind, and apart from the billions in cold hard cash disappearing south, they then spend a sizable bit of their budget enforcing yet another war (ok, on a noun this time!) that swells their prisons and clogs their courts. All of which keeps the profits flowing south, bigtime. They really aren’t smart, are they?

    If it wasn’t tragic it would be funny.

    Maybe they should start another war: a war on stupidity, and it can start at home.

  25. Illicit substances are a nice easy issue for politicians to avoid talking about, because it doesn’t make good politics, particularly in the US where the putting the Bible-belt offside is a great way to bring on electoral oblivion.

    But the effect of Nixon’s War on Drugs and Reagan’s later drug stance has had little real effect on the issue of illicit drug importation (particularly the white powdery kind from Colombia) apart from increasing the imprisonment rate in the United States to one of the highest in the world. While it’s ugly politics, I feel the system needs to change in the US to put higher penalties on the dealers and importers, and provide increased support to the users; rather than just locking them up and letting them out after they’ve done their time so they can get right back on them again.

  26. Morning Bludgers –
    just checked the polls – Obama on an almost 7% lead! Why TF is she dragging this out???
    Having read through the posts since yesterday afternoon I am struck by the complete dearth of any new and compelling reasons to change my mind towards Hillary. Or to lose support for Obama:- still trying to get some traction out of PastorsauceGate, and trying to minimise the political reality of Iraq. I truly cannot see how these 2 issues can be held up as comparatives. All it does is reinforce the feeling that the Clinton camp has got nothing to argue with other than the belief that she should win because, well, because she just should.

  27. Sobering views of what the world will look like next year:

    US debt hardly looks like a bargain right now, even without the sinking dollar. Far-flung military misadventures continue to stretch the country’s fiscal resources, with costs potentially running into many trillions of dollars, according to a recent study by Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes.

    Next year will almost certainly see a massive rise in US corporate defaults, even though many firms entered the recession with relatively strong balance sheets. State and municipal finances are in even worse shape. With tax revenues collapsing due to falling home prices and incomes, dozens of US municipalities could well go into receivership, as New York City did in the 1970s. US municipal bonds are already trading at huge risk premiums, and the first big government default hasn’t even hit yet.

    …all coming to a ‘superpower’ near you!

  28. #446 – Max – love the West Wing scenario. But i heard that there is a different ending.

    Four Days in Denver, * By Lawrence O’Donnell Jr

    http://nymag.com/news/politics/45786/
    ……….
    Hillary: He won’t accept anything without my—

    Barack holds up the iPhone. close on text message: CLARK DEAL DONE. LUV U, M. Hillary looks pained—as much by the Clark deal as by the love in the Obama marriage. Barack gives her a moment to process the shock, then…

    Barack (softly): I want you to come with me to the press conference.

    Hillary: No way.

    Barack: I need—

    Hillary (in her Bosnian accent and Mostar steely look): “How is your Indonesian step father?”

    Barack: (as his face at first just ghostly, then slowly turned a whiter shade of pale): “I accept the VP nomination”.

    Hillary: I can’t win the election without you. I need you, Barack.

    CUT TO:
    Press conference. CLOSE ON Hillary smiling from ear to ear, as camera motors whir, a thousand camera flashes pop. REVEAL she’s holding her arms straight up in a Rocky-style victory pose. WIDEN to reveal her left hand gripping Barack’s hand. MOVE IN for a two-shot of Barack and Hillary as we PRE-LAP the sound of the growing roar of 20,000 people.

    Barack (voice-over, shouting): I give you the next president of the United States, Hillary Clinton!!

  32. And just for GG, a much more eloquent version of the Hillary who cried wolf argument I presented yesterday which was found so morally compromising (with my emphasis):

    “The increasing scrutiny of Clinton’s statements in recent days has revived an old weakness – voter doubts about her trustworthiness – that until now has played little part in the campaign.

    In the past few weeks, the problem has gotten so acute that even things she says that turn out to be true – for instance, her statement the other day that she shook hands with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Chicago when she was 14 – immediately draw questions.”

    http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0408/9459.html

  33. Jen @ 530 – It’s infectious confabulation that has Finns in its grip. While you were away, Hillary lured many supporters to her fantasy planet peopled by self-cloning alien Hillary delegates, from which leads a road of yellow bricks directly back to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. When she has enough delegates cloned, her triumphant march along the yellow brick road will begin.

    It’s the only way she can think of to rack up enough delegates on her current deficit. Crafty, eh?

  34. a cunning plan indeed, jv!
    and about the best chance she’s got it would seem. Unless we all come to our senses of course, and realise that despite the fact that she is a liar, who supported the disasterous war in Iraq, and only ever got to where she is by virtue of who she was married to, that she really is the best candidate because, well, because she says so.

  35. 521: re Survey USA. Rasmussen released a poll today for PA 48/43 (to clinton), +5.
    Quinnipiac yesterday (huge sample) for PA 50/44 (to clinton), +6.
    Yet Survey USA (smallest sample of the three) has +18 ??

    Survey USA in their genius predicted Clinton would win Missouri (and go close in Alabama)!
    I’m sorry, I don’t give them much credit.

  36. Claude,

    Rasmussen reports had a sample size of 695 voters, SUSA 597, Quinnipac 1340, so the 95% confidence intervals are 3.7%, 4.0% and 2.6% (ignoring demographic weightings all those other things which introduce errors and bias). I’m not saying the poll is right, and it probably is an outlier, but outright dismissing the results of the SUSA poll on sample size and because it doesn’t say what you want it to say is a silly thing to do, and something that I bet Obama’s campaign isn’t doing.

  37. #530 – Now i understand why Ron labels you guys as “Obamabots” because you react as a robot to anything that is not pro Obama.

  38. I’m sure they are not righting it off! Clinton still leads, reasonably significantly and having “narrowed” the lead somewhat, I’m sure Obama wants to cut in deeper.
    Interestingly, there seems to be some parallels between PA and OH where (if I recall correctly), that Obama closed within 5 points before Clinton extended her lead in the last week of polling.
    I just find it odd, given my perception that Clinton has had a bad week (Penn, Bosnia and Hospital (now proven to a correct story), that one survey would be going the other way…

  39. Finns –
    what indeed are you Hillary supporters then?
    It seems that despite cold hard evidence of her clear unsuitability for such high office (ie- she’s an out and out liar for a start), nothing seems to change your view of her. The best any of you have come up with yet to criticise Obama is the tired old Pastor Wright stuff. Oh, and he had a cigarette when he was trying to give up. In comparison Hillary’s campaign has been bullet- riddled, and yet we are repaetedly being accussed of being mindless barrackers for Barack. Go figure!

  41. Jen, have you not worked out the rules of the game yet? Us Obamabots are the doe-eyed dreamers, hoping against hope. It’s the Clintonauts who are the hardheaded realists come to rain on our parade with logic and facts aplenty.

  42. Ron, in your comments yesterday, you seemed to indicate that you are continuing to push this Wright thing becuase that is what McCain will do. Perhaps you missed this interview which McCain gave where he offers a far more concilitory interpretation of the issue than you seem to be representing him as holding:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQquSOnlxJ8

  43. While I disagree with many of McCain’s policies, the cover of that book appears to be making fun of his disabilities that he suffered as a prisoner of war which I find fairly distasteful. I’m guessing many people who see the cover of that book may think the same. I would have much preferred if it “played the ball, not the man”.

  44. Shorter Petraeus : Better get used to it, America. It’s war without end!
    ——————–
    Didn’t read it that way at all, Al at 544. What I see is a sycophant sucking up to an Imbecile, formerly a perpetual deployment dodger, who now happens to be his Commander-In-Chief.

  45. #524 Al

    I did not call you an Obamabot , as if you’d probably care anyway either way
    There are 3 Obama supporter groups here.

    The majority being the Obamabots…Obama has no flaws that are acknowledged

    The minority core Obama supporters who will general political issues with reasons (which they & I may or may not agree with each other on)
    and who do declare some not minor Obama flaws & may or may not be impeded
    to be more expansive by the wolve pack mentality of the majority Obamabots

    Then there are the minescule solid Obama supporters who call a spade a spade

    Hillary ? I would have voted for her without an Obama candidature. Even though I’ve always acknowledged & still acknowledge she has lots of ‘warts’ not the least of which is her over ambition & her political expediency. when Obama came , he seemed to display qualities Hillary lacked & so I strongly supported him

    A subsequent analysis of Obama including his Senate voting record , Rezko , pre 2008 public interview statements , Pastorgate , his cynical Philly speech to camoflage it but it opened more questions , his subsequent flip flop on his Philly committment made me conclude he is not as electable as Hillary when McCain attacks & has exposed greater flaws in him than Hillary regarding his suitability for POTUS.

    A line I’ve said before comes to mind re Obama and HIS ticker and convictions ,
    20 years believing in listening in silence to a Pastor sprouting anti US views that Obama NOW condemns begs the question:

    If with your convictions , you could not stand up to the Pastor’s convictions ,
    how as POTUS are you going to stand up for the whole American people ?

  48. Pancho, I may be wrong, but I’m pretty sure that he can’t really do a much better cuddle because of his inability to lift his arms.

    Ron,
    I don’t think anything will come of Rezko, it doesn’t resonate with voters and has been unable to gain any traction. His biggest issue to date was without a doubt his Pastor, but I thought his response was sufficient to stem the bleed that that could have caused. We’ll have to agree to disagree on your last question Ron. I think the campaign has moved on from his Pastor and his response was firm and reassuring enough to save himself from additional damage down the track on it. Only time will tell which of us is right.

    The one thing that saddens me in America is how much it seems taboo to be labelled a “liberal”.

  49. Al – you might be right about the arms. To be honest I have no idea whether or not he can raise them. I thought the really funny part was the closed eyes and sinking into Dubya’s inviting chest like a prodigal maverick who had finally returned home.

  50. Turning Worm –
    this whole discussion is becoming bizarre.
    it’s starting to remind me of Alice in Wonderland (which I think may have involved Lewis Carroll having a special relationship with a LSD). – hallucinations must be the explanation. Because it sure ain’t the polls.

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