In a remarkable change in political direction over the last 60 days, the State of Missouri is now leaning several points in Obama’s favor. Pollster puts the race at about two points in Obama’s favor. In October the majority of polls show Missouri leaning to Obama outside the statistical margin of error.
It is also worth noting that these polls do not include recently registered voters that most predictions suggest will add a few additional points in Obama’s favor.
In a remarkable show of support for Barack Obama and estimated 100,000 people attended a rally today under the Gateway Arch. The sea of people that went on as far as the eye could see by some estimates could have exceeded 150,000. Either way it is by far the largest rally to date for the Democratic Presidential candidate in the United States, only surpassed by the rally in Germany over the summer.
Obama under the arch in St. Louis, Missouri
NBC video highlighting rally in St. Louis and change of Missouri to an Obama state.
With the recent surge in polls (Gallup: Obama=51%, McCain 42%) Obama has opened up his largest lead in the campaign in the national polls. More importantly Obama has also pulled ahead in many of the battleground states giving him a formidable advantage in the campaign.
A few months back we predicted an Obama victory in November of about 5% in the popular vote and about 50 electoral votes. With the success we had predicting the primaries we thought our estimate was sound… but we could not have predicted both the economic decline and the selection of “maverick” Palin is the VP pick. It is hard to tell which one has hurt the McCain campaign most? Keep reading →
According to a poll of almost 500 uncommitted voters conducted by CBS and Knowledge Networks Sen. Joe Biden defeated Gov. Palin by a two to one margin.
Forty-six percent of the uncommitted voters surveyed say Democrat Joe Biden won the debate, compared to 21 percent for Republican Sarah Palin. Thirty-three percent said it was a tie.
Eighteen percent of previously uncommitted percent say they are now committed to the Obama-Biden ticket. Ten percent say they are now committed to McCain-Palin. Seventy-one percent are still uncommitted.
Both candidates improved their overall image tonight. Fifty-three percent of those surveyed say they now have a better impression of Biden. Five percent say they have a worse opinion of the Delaware senator, while 42 percent say they debate did not change their opinion.
Fifty-five percent say they now have a better opinion of Palin. Fourteen percent say they have a worse opinion, while 30 percent say their opinion hasn’t changed.
After the debate, 66 percent see Palin as knowledgeable about important issues – up from 43 percent before the debate. But Biden still has the advantage on this – 98 percent saw him as knowledgeable after the debate. That figure was 79 percent before the debate.
According to the CBS web site more detail on the poll and additional survey results will be posted at a later time.
The Obama campaign announced today that the Obama / Biden campaign raised $66,000,000 in August, shattering the record Obama set back in February of $55,000,000 by 20%. More impressive was the 500,000 new voters that are new contributors to the campaign making it the most widely supported presidential run in history.
Campaign manager David Plouffe said:
John McCain says that he’ll take on the special interests and lobbyists, but McCain can’t fix a problem he’s been part of for three decades. The 500,000 new donors to the Obama campaign demonstrate just how strongly the American people are looking to kick the special interests out and change Washington. We are proud of the millions of volunteers and more than 2.5 million donors to the Obama campaign who are contributing to help us deliver the change we need instead of letting John McCain just continue the same failed Bush policies while middle class Americans struggle.
According to a very interesting and well researched article by Seth Colter Walls the short answer is YES. Polling does not sample recently registered voters and typically the reach out to equal numbers of democrats and republicans causing data to be skewed because there are about eleven million more registered democrats in the United States. Keep reading →
One of the more interesting campaign lines today came from Hillary Clinton talking about McCain and Palin to about 300 in Florida.
“To slightly amend my comments in Denver,” she said, “no way, no how, no McCain, no Palin.”
Clinton said the nation should be proud that the Republicans have a woman on the ticket, but argued that returning Republicans to the White House “is like asking the iceberg to save the Titanic.“
Last night the Daily Show with Jon Stewart covered the Republican convention and took a look at some of the comments and commentators. Might be the best Daily Show ever. Highlights include, well you should watch it for yourself.
