Some unconvincing spin from Steve Schmidt:
“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.”
Actually, with a week to go in 2000, Gore was only down 2-3 points in national polls:
By contrast, Pollster.com estimates Obama is up by eight points right now:
Update 10/24 10:27 AM: The 2000 graph above, which is from Charles Franklin of the University of Wisconsin and Pollster.com, has a mislabeled y-axis -- it should be "Gore minus Bush" not "Kerry minus Bush".
Yes, a campaign manager must try to keep hope alive, but there is no hope. One reason Bush didn't match his polls was that his old drunk driving conviction dominated the news the last 2 days before the election. In retrospect, the DUI told us nothing important. We already knew that Bush had once been a heavy drinker and we knew he had quite drinking many years ago.
Could Obama be defeated by a last minute surprise? I'd say no. Not only is his lead considerably larger, but IMHO the media wouldn't publicize a negative story the same way they did Bush's DUI.
Posted by: David | October 24, 2008 at 10:42 AM
One reason Bush didn't match his polls was that his old drunk driving conviction dominated the news the last 2 days before the election.
I think it's a stretch to blame any news story on a difference between the final polling results and the actual outcome. My guess is the drunk driving story didn't change a single vote.
Polls are estimates of public support, not actual measurements of it and have fundamental uncertainty outside of their margins of error (like what the composition of the actual voting population will be.) That's where much of the scatter in the polls resides and explains why different polls taken on the same day can fall outside each other's MOE. You can see that on the charts Brendan posted above.
Posted by: Jinchi | October 24, 2008 at 03:27 PM
In retrospect, the DUI told us nothing important. We already knew that Bush had once been a heavy drinker and we knew he had quite drinking many years ago.
Drinking isn't illegal. Drunken driving is. Lying about it on the campain trail said something about his (lack of) character (though I agree that was something we already knew).
Posted by: Kyle McCullough | October 25, 2008 at 12:55 PM
What is with the first chart above? The label on top says it's about 2000. The legend on the left axis says it's measuring Kerry minus Bush (which, some of us remember was in 2004).
Posted by: dkfennell | October 27, 2008 at 04:11 AM
And in no way did that story 'dominate the news'. It got some coverage, but a friend who was a Gore staffer vented to me only days later about how little coverage it got, and I distinctly remember commiserating but thinking 'with as little detail as was available, it was surprising it got any at all.'
Posted by: luis | October 27, 2008 at 07:15 AM
(Oh, and go Devils. That story took place somewhere on Ninth Street.)
Posted by: luis | October 27, 2008 at 07:21 AM
The problem with the chart at top is that it is mislabeled -- Not the Kerry thing, that's correct -- it's the "2000" label. That looks like the chart for the 2004 campaign.
Here's the link to a chart that plots 2000, 2004 and 2008 on the same graph, courtesy of pollster.com:
http://www.pollster.com/blogs/Pres08vs04aand000verlay.png
Posted by: Ego Nemo | October 27, 2008 at 08:32 AM
It take it all back. The top chart on this post is the 2000 confidence interval. My apologies. But it was Gore.
Posted by: Ego Nemo | October 27, 2008 at 08:35 AM