McCain needs a perfect storm to win
Friday, October 31, 2008 at 07:42AM I floated a theory on the Ralph Bailey show last night about how McCain could get to 270. Essentially, he needs three things to happen.
First, there needs to be a huge "bradley effect", meaning 4-6 percent of the respondents to these national polls who claim to be voting for Obama need to vote for McCain. In the primary, there was evidence of the "bradley effect" in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiania, but the extent of which is uncertain. McCain needs a whopper of a bradley effect to even be in the ballgame.
Second, McCain needs the youth turnout to be lighter than anticipated. Historically, young people (24 and under) have been the least represented cohort at the polling place. All we've heard for the past 18 months is how young people are going to vote in record numbers -- and that may yet be the case. But it's also possible that they resort to form and are underrepresented (vis a vis other demographics) come election day. McCain needs that to happen to have a chance.
And third, the remaining undecideds -- and there's still about 5 percent of them out there -- need to break for McCain. On this front, McCain actually might get some help in the sense that undecideds normally break 2 to 1 for the challenger. In this case, Obama -- given his frontrunner status in a change election -- is the presumptive incumbent, and so if the theory holds, it's possible that undecideds may break for McCain.
McCain needs all three to happen in order to have a chance. Is it likely? No. Is it possible? Yes. Of course, a Reverend Wright bombshell wouldn't hurt, either ...
Reader Comments (3)
I just voted for you on the bloglist. BTW, you have a subscribe mechanism, but you don't provide the option to get email alerts. Can you add this?
Good question -- does my lasagna loving brother have an answer for that?
You're really lucky to have such a nice brother. I hope you buy him tons of lasagna!