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What McCain Must Do To Win the Election10/28/08
National Polls Average: Obama 51, McCain 44. (Obama +7%). According to our daily average, Obama is ahead by 7% nationally. But here are a couple of caveats. We are using Gallup's expanded voter turnout model that has Obama ahead by 7% and excluded their traditional model which has Obama ahead by only 2%! And as of the time of this writeup, the results of the latest IBD/TIPP polls have not been released and they have been showing a narrowing race with McCain down by just 3% the past two days (6% last week). So we admit that our 7% average is skewed a bit in favor of Obama. The state polls are getting a bit boring though. We see that Obama still maintains his leads in Florida, Ohio, Virginia, and Colorado. But for now, I am going to play a game called "What McCain needs to do to win the election."
The trends we see in the state polls trail the trends seen in national polls so if we were to, let's say, see a 4% McCain gain in the national polls we could essentially see a tied up race. There's uncertainty as to how much a 4% jump in the national polls would translate per state but I think it is safe to say a 4% gain in the national polls would effectively take care of #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, and #7 above. That leaves Nevada -3.5% and Virginia -7.5% in the air. Let's assume Nevada moves McCain's way with a 4% move, then McCain will have satisfied #6 above. And as Karl Rove said in a FOX News interview, the shift to McCain down the stretch in Virginia will exceed whatever shift McCain gets nationally. So a 4% move in McCain's favor nationally could mean 6 or 7% (for example) in Virginia. So what McCain needs to do to win this election is move the polls numbers by about 4% nationally. That would knock down a lot of the necessary dominos. And then campaign hard in Virginia, Pennsylvania, Iowa, New Mexico, and Colorado. McCain practically needs to win Virginia and one other state. If McCain's deficit in the national polls gets to about 3%, then we can say the race is as tight as a whistle.
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