I get a steady stream of e-mails from readers of this site who favor John McCain and seem to think they can swing the election his way if they can only flip my (already-cast) vote. One has been bombarding me all weekend with news that the race is tightening; that "the polls" show McCain gaining to within four points of Obama. I finally took the time to write back to the guy and inform him…
- The poll he's citing is the Zogby Poll and it doesn't say four points. It says 4.8 and it's headlined "Obama Lead Holds Steady."
- This is the Zogby Poll, which is about as reliable as a fishnet condom. You know, a lot of election watchers cheat and when a pollster tells them what they want to believe, he's the only pollster that matters…but when he has bad news for them, he's biased, full of crap and not to be taken seriously. Not around here. Do a search. We consistently think Zogby is useless. This is the guy who told us halfway through Election Day of 2004 that Kerry would win with 311 electoral votes. Getting it that far wrong a day or two before would be bad enough…but this was with exit poll data!
- Even Zogby has been up and down this time, with wild swings in many races that are inconsistent with the other polls.
- Zogby has Obama winning handily from an Electoral College standpoint. He says, as all the polls do, that Obama is sure to win all the states Kerry won, plus Iowa's seven electoral votes. That alone puts Obama at 259. Then Zogby also awards him Virginia, which has 13. That works out to 272 votes and a win for Obama, even without all those other states in which Obama presently leads.
- But Zogby doesn't seem to read his own polls. He says, "McCain is well within striking distance in each of the six states in which he trails. None of Obama's leads are outside the margin of error. However, unless McCain can take one of the big states won by John Kerry in 2004, such as Pennsylvania, he needs to win these six states. He might be able to survive the loss of Nevada, but probably not any of the others." Yeah, but Zogby's own electoral map has Obama at 273 without any of those six states (Nevada, Missouri, Ohio, Florida, North Carolina and Colorado). McCain needs to win most of them plus something like Pennsylvania.
- Why 273? If you go to that map right now, you'll see that 252 electoral votes (what Kerry won) plus Iowa's seven and Virginia's thirteen all add up to 273 votes! Anywhere else, those numbers would add up to 272 but this is Zogby.
Polls are going to be all over the place this week and everyone will seize on any possible outlier if it's what they want to believe. Look at the big picture. It's a big election and a big country. It deserves a big picture.