Fifteen Days Out

A week ago, I opined that one of two things was occurring in the Presidential race.  Either this year was becoming like 1980, where the country decided that it had accepted the candidate of change and was breaking heavily toward him, or it was like 2000 and 1996, where the country was skeptical of the change agent, would not let him above 50% consistently in the polls, and would decide at the last minute that it preferred the old, boring, steady hand (yes, Dole was the old, boring, status quo agent.  Remember his "Bridge to the past" theme?). 

At the time, I actually believed that what we were seeing was the former, and I expected the bounce we were seeing for Obama to continue, and that he would end up winning by 10 points or so.  As I said at the time, I thought Obama had about a 90% chance of winning.

That may still be the case, but for now it is looking as if the race is returning to the old dynamic where Obama maintained a lead, but found it awfully difficult to break above 50%.  That continues to be the only thing holding me back from declaring the race over.

How We Got Here

But before getting into thoughts on the present state of the race,  I thought it would be useful to explore how we got to where we find ourselves today.

Below is a chart taken of the RealClearPolitics.com averages from September 1 through October 14.  It has various important dates marked prominently, which should allow us to ascertain which events were "game changers," and which were not.

As you can see, when the RNC began, Obama found himself up about five points, and peaked at about a 6.5-point lead after the first day of the RNC was effectively cancelled.  But after a surprisingly successful RNC, McCain shot up to a 2.5% lead.

I thought the gross over-hype of the "lipstick on a pig/old dead fish" line had stopped their spike (look, I've got no doubt that Obama was referring to Mcain and Palin, but its hardly worth generating a commercial over), but McPalin peaked at a little above 48% the day before the comment began generating attention.  Why?  Because two days before the lipstick/pig comment, the government bailed out Fannie and Freddie.  This began a series of shocks to McCain's poll standing brought about by shocks to the economic system and expansions of government further into the economy.

After this, McCain maintained a 2.5% lead over Obama and Biden for a little over a week, and it began to look like the Convention bounce was not just a bounce, but rather was a fundamental re-working of the dynamics of the campaign.

Then, the Lehman Brothers/AIG collapse hit.  The economy again took center stage again.  As Jay Cost insightfully noted, it is almost impossible for a banking crisis to hit and for Republicans not to take the blame.  Obama/Biden immediately switched positions with McCain/Palin, and took on a 2-point lead. 

This dynamic held steady for a little bit over a week.  Then, McCain made what I believed at the time to be an awful decision, though possibly the only choice he had given the hand he was dealt:  He suspended his campaign, and moved to cancel the upcoming debate.  Note what happens immediately after this decision.  Obama's numbers held steady, while McCain's numbers immediately dropped three points.  My interpretation was (and is) that people hadn't particularly warmed to Obama, but rather looked at McCain and thought "what the ____?" (you can fill that in with "heck," "hell," or worse, depending on your predilections; mine was the latter).

Obama's numbers don't start rising until a week later, when the Dow dropped 800 points, and conclude their rise a couple of weeks later, when the Dow bottomed out at 8500.  These are important points.  Note that the debates have little impact on the ebb and flow; the only debate that really impacts McCain's numbers is his second debate with Obama, and even here, my recollection is that this debate coincided with the worst of the market meltdown (I actually couldn't find a day-by-day account of the status of the stock markets, but could only find a few critical points in my google searches).

Where Things Stand

Anyway, after the stock market settled down and McCain steadied his ship, an interesting thing happened.  Obama's lead began to recede.  This seemed to indicate that Obama's lead was driven more by events than by widespread acceptance of the candidate.

As I write this, McCain is currently down by 4.8 points in the RCP average, with Obama at 49.1 and McCain at 44.3. That's down from a 8.2 point lead for Obama on the 14th, with Obama up 50.2 to 42.  Obama has lost a point and change, while McCain has gained about two points and change.  Gallup and IBD have yet to weigh in, and this could change this a bit.  Regardless, I think the race has settled down to about a five-point lead for Obama, with him at around 49%.

What happened here?  I think two things:  Joe the Plumber and the debate.  McCain came out feistier in the Presidential debate, and Obama's comments about "spreading the wealth" around scared the pants off of conservatives.  I tend to think Obama's comments are the most important of the two.

The reason is that the result of the past week has been a net increase in Republican enthusiasm.  The Diageo/Hotline tracking poll (why is the nation's largest liquor company teaming up with the Hotline to poll Presidential elections?) shows a narrowing of the enthusiasm gap over the last week.  Hotline explains:

The enthusiasm gap between the candidates is now 16%. 68% of Obama supporters say they are enthusiastically supporting the Dem nominee, while 52% of McCain supporters say the same. One week ago, in the survey completed 10/12, the gap was 21% -- with 65% enthusiastically for Obama and just 44% enthusiastically for McCain.

This matters because one of the two typical questions in a likely voter screen is how certain you are to vote on election day.  If you are unenthusiastic about your candidate, you are more likely to exhibit less enthusiasm about voting.  This means that you will slip through a likely voter screen.  As your enthusiasm increases, the more likely your preference will "register" in the likely voter column.  My guess is that this explained a good chunk of McCain's drop, and a good portion of his resurgance.

Where We Go From Here

Right now Obama is close enough to 50% that McCain could gobble up almost all of the undecideds, and Obama would still win.  But there is still a chance that Obama's support level will continue to drop off.  If, by next week, Obama is down to 48%, McCain will have a real chance to win this thing, not the hypothetical chance that he has right now.

Even the three "ouches" from yesterday that Moe Lane observed at RedState probably aren't the end of the road for McCain.  Let's review them in turn:

1) $150M for Obama in September.  Well, I guess the question of how Obama has been obliterating McCain in ad spending when McCain/RNC had kept up nicely with Obama/DNC through August has been answered.  Still, I don't think this is the equivalent of Sherman's March that Patrick described.

The reason is that campaign cash does not have a linear relationship with vote share.  The relationship is logarithmic.  That is, the initial spending gains you a lot of votes.  But you quickly hit a point of diminishing returns.  This is part of why five of the six Senate candidates who lost in 2006 outspent their opponents by around 2-1, but still lost by margins varying from .5% to 18%.

This is intuitive.  If a candidate spends nothing, no one learns about her.  She loses.  If she spends a little bit of money, she will reach hardcore partisans.  They will vote for her, and her vote share should improve substantially.  If she spends even more money, she begins to max out on hardcore partisans, and now has to move voters who are more resistant to her message.  Her dollars go less far.

At a certain point, that candidate begins to hit candidates like me.  To get me to vote for Obama, you would have to subject me to the Ludivico Technique, and even then I would likely simply stay home (this isn't to say that I would never vote for a Democrat, and I'm genuinely undecided about how I'm going to vote in my Senate race where Democrats have put forward a reasonable, pro-business Democrat who governed my state somewhere to the right of where Giuliani governed New York).  The point is that I'm not liberal, especially on economic issues, and no amount of commercials is going to convince me to vote for a candidate who probably is not only liberal, but left-wing (there is a difference).

Indeed, we saw similar results for Obama in the primaries, post-Wisconsin, where he badly outspent Senator Clinton by 2:1, 3:1, or even 4:1, and still frequently lost primaries by double digits.  Since he clinched the nomination he has approached 50% three times in the RCP averages:  After his Europe trip, after the convention, and after the stock market dropped by a third.  The question is whether he is capable of sustaining or moving past that 50% mark.

One interesting test will be the response to his half-hour World Series television buy.  This was an interesting move by Obama, not just because it foreshadowed a huge September fundraising month, but because of its symbolism.  Obama has indicated many times that he hopes to be something of a left-wing Ronald Reagan.  Although I think he badly misunderstands what Reagan was about, why he won, and why he governed successfully, the idea is that he will claim a mandate to change the direction of the country (again, I think he badly misunderstands how much Reagan actually changed the direction of the country).

This is significant, because the undecideds broke heavily toward Reagan after his debate performance the Thursday before the election.  What had been a neck-and-neck race turned into a blowout.  I don't think its accidental that he bought half an hour of network television time of the same week that Reagan made his successful closing argument.

So I think one of two things will happen.  Either (a) people will tune in and he will finally bring these voters home or (b) people will be so sick of Barack Obama commercials that they will turn the channel.  Neither would surprise me.  But if this were 1980, when political spending was still relatively low, I think there would certainly be enough people who hadn't made up their minds about Barack Obama that this commercial would make a difference.  This year I'm not so sure

Obama will likely spend about three-quarters of a billion dollars over the course of the campaign.  He has already spent about half a billion dollars.  Given everything that has occurred in the last month, he should not be brushing against 50%.  He should be brushing 55% or 60%. Whatever is holding him back, it is not that people don't know who he is, or what his platform is.

2) 100,000 strong crowd in Saint Louis.  Obama has been absolutely masterful at drawing throngs to show strength.  Witness the 70,000 people who turned out to hear him in Oregon just before the Oregon primary.  Then again, he had a massive rally in Pennsylvania right before losing by ten points. 

There is no doubt that there is a solid base of extremely enthusiastic Obama supporters.  I can't recall anyone shaving the fact and campaign symbol of any other political candidate into their hair in my lifetime (I'd like to believe this is a photoshop).  But when the Republican vice-Presidential candidate can generate a 60,000 person audience on her own, one has to conclude that there is some enthusiasm on the Republican side of the aisle as well, inasmuch as crowd size is indicative of anything.

3) Colin Powell.  This, I think, is probably the most troubling of the three (for Republicans).  Powell is the closest thing to a truly nonpartisan political figure there is in America.  He's someone whose endorsement could resonante strongly with the undecided voter described below. 

Yet one must also recall that, on the eve of the Massachusetts primary, Obama was endorsed by Ted Kennedy, in a "passing of the torch" type of moment.  He had the Governor in his corner.  He went on to lose by fifteen points, with Hillary getting almost every undecided voter.

In other words, the value of endorsements is somewhat overrated in this country, as demonstrated again and again in the primary.  The first day of tracking polls after the announcement hasn't shown much movement.  We'll see what happens as the week progresses.

***

I think, more important than any of these, is the makeup of the undecideds.  I've harped on this before, but Gallup's internals show that they are disproportionately made up of older, less educated, and unaffiliated with any particular party.  These are people with whom Obama has not performed well.  These are also people who are not particularly involved in the political process, and who aren't particularly susceptible to partisan attacks.  They probably make up a good portion of the 40% of voters who don't realize that Republicans don't still control Congress.

Obama is getting 95% of liberal Democrats to McCain's 3%.  McCain is getting 93% of conservative Republicans to Obama's 5%.  This election is down to the weaker partisans.  I would not be surprised if they broke en masse toward McCain.  I would not be surprised if they split 50-50.  Nor would I be surprised if they broke toward Obama.  And I would not be surprised if they broke on the last weekend.

At any rate, if McCain holds Obama to 48-49%, and can move within 3-4% by election day, this race becomes winnable.  At that point, undecideds could break heavily enough toward him to push him over the edge.  More importantly, potential shortcomings of polls and methodological errors like Bradley effects, Shy Tort effects, declined-responses to pollsters, or conversely, turnout efforts and cellphone effects can make the difference.

After two years, its hard to believe this race is over.  But its important to remember that it is over in 15 days, not tomorrow.

PS Just to pre-empt, yes, I've seen the battleground state polls.  We've also learned that these polls are trailing indicators.  We should start to see some movement toward McCain in most of these states over the course of this week.

SEMI-UPDATE:  As I am getting ready to publish this, I see that Jay Cost has penned a similar piece over at realclearpolitics.com.  The chart he published, showing how undecideds broke in that election, is telling.  Note that Bush was leading Gore by about the same amount that Obama is leading McCain today. 

Like Jay, my point is not that we can expect this race to follow the 2000 template.  My point is just that the template is there, and that those who believe that McCain simply cannot come back from five points down don't remember their election history correctly.  Dole made up three to four points from the final polling in 1996.  Gore made up about five points in 2000.  The Republicans finished about three points ahead of the generic balloting in 2006.  Polls are good, but they are not always accurate.