Great post Jonathan. Had a beer with a friend last night and he was asking me who would win the election. I told him Obama has it in the bag and that's it's already over. He pointed out that the polls show that they're actually very close. Gave him the usual canard that polls don't matter at this stage, then there was an uncomfortable silence.

Nice to see someone in TNR land pull back the curtains, open the window and let some air in.

I just hope his Berlin stunt doesn't turn into his Kinnock moment. If McCain's smart he should roll up his sleeves and get some photo's of him at a gritty jobs centre helping new applicants fill out their forms.

Before they spend more time with polls, maybe pundits should spend more time learning how to sift signals from noise in polling and other data.

Case in point: Rasmussen reports that both Hillary and Gore do far better than Young Barack against McCain. Granted that -- a few months ago anyway-- one could have explained some of the gap in terms of awareness, but is there any likely voter in this country who has not now heard plenty about Obama? And hasn't the press coverage been overwhemingly favorable to Obama, and also hugely embarrassing and damaging to McCain?

If awareness doesn't explain the Gore-HRC vs Obama gap, then the likely explanation for the Rasmussen poll data is that while our party has a huge advantage vs the GOP, the party's _candidate_ is undermining that advantage.

IOW, Obama *** as candidate for POTUS *** is detracting from our natural and huge brand superiority. He raises all the nagging reservations people have about our party, without reinforcing all the very strong favorables that our party conveys to people.

Outside of the blogblatherer and media fanclubs, this very troubling conclusion would be analyzed intelligently and debated in, as they say, a reality-based manner.

Iggy - if McCain's even smarter he will have his people blanket the crowd at Obama's Berlin speech and record all the "AmeriKKKa" and pro-Palestinian banners, chants etc they can find.

Preferably as uttered by Kreuzberger types with fascinating facial jewelry and tats.

Are the pundits claiming that they are supported by the polls, that he's crushing McCain IN THE POLLS? Or are the presupposing that the polls at this stage of the election are pretty meaningless, and they're making their own assessment of the odds of each winning apart from the polling data?

I'm not as sanguine about Obama's chances as, say, Fineman is, but I don't see why we should necessarily assume he's wrong, merely because the polls produce different numbers than he suggests. It's quite defensible to ignore polling at this stage of the game. It's possible to ignore polls too much. But it's also possible to give them too much weight. There are minor fluctuations in the polls and many pretty intelligent people discount them completely before the conventions.

My 5 cent poll interpreter

signal = a proposition Tep agrees with

noise = a proposition Tep disagrees with

Because most readers other than Tep don't have any access to Tep's internal states, a good general rule of thumb is this- if a poll paints an optimistic picture of Obama or his chances, it's likely noise. If it paints a pessimistic picture of him or his chances, it's signal.

Now, you too, can interpret polls.

What pundits and those who are rooting for Obama perceive as his cool, composed, intelligent and statesmanlike character probably is perceived very differently by the average person out there who's catching glimpses of the campaigns on nightly tv and isn't following too closely all the analysis of the candidate's positions. I bet Obama comes across to them as kind of mysterious or unfamiliar, and as very presumptuous. And to be honest, his appearance of presumptuousness is starting to make me wince a little now and then too. I mean, how many times in all these interviews this week has he said, "My job as President is to..." or "My job as C-in-C is to..." instead of "My job as President would be..." (or some such.) These things might be superficial/ substantively meaningless, but I wouldn't be surprised if they grate on a lot of people.

Plus, McCain's message on the surge is more stark and therefore makes a stronger impression than Obama's. And I also think pundits are overestimating the extent to which average viewers are registering McCain's gaffes and nastiness, and they're exaggerating McCain's appearance to viewers of his awkwardness, etc.

Cute, mice.

Snark aside, tell us true, how do you explain the vast gap between the party's performance and the party's candidate's performance?

Can you plausibly interpret this in a way that does not suggest the candidate is squandering a commanding natural advantage?

Awaiting a serious, fact-based analysis,

t

Slugger,

I think that the larger impression that Obama is crushing McCain may be based upon the electoral maps that are available on realclearpolitics, zogby, and rasmussen, where Obama's projected electoral vote counts are very high. Now, if you look at those numbers, Obama's lead in some of the key swing states - VA, FL, PA, and others - is modest to small but still, he is ahead in many key states. I think that realclear has a no leaners based total of 322 electoral votes.

So, contrary to the the alleged reality based nimbus articulated by friend tep (which can be neatly summarized as tep constantly saying that he, unlike all the rest of us gullible pendejos, is too smart and hard assed to be taken in by Obama - there is some rational basis for the impression that Obama is crushing The Mummy. In one sense, he is but I do agree that his margin of advantage is certainly slim and needs to be padded for this pendejo to feel bettter.

tep,

I see you are once again harping on Rasmussen's Alternate Universe Poll, which is as useful in measuring political moods as a koala is in determining the weather. When you ask people a question that they know for a fact they will never have to answer, you're not going to get data that's worth anything.

Here's when I'll really be worried: When Obama changes his strategy or when he stops campaigning in some states, and which ones he does it in. The campaigns have better information than we do (and more specific polls and sampling data) and are using that. Looking at how Obama is running and what he is trying to do tells me all I need to know about the current state of this race. It certainly tells me more than reading a summertime poll after a unnecessarily long primary process when most voters are clearly not only ignoring the campaign, but also worried about their day-to-day.

Until then, let me know how many banana it takes to get from New York to Boston.

Man politics is annoying.  Obama is ahead in the polls, but since he should be way ahead, being ahead is actually the same as being behind -- huh?

It seems a miracle to me that a Black man named Barack Hussein Obama is beating a White man named John McCain in the polls.  Get it, get it?!?  He's ahead!

on why Obama underperforms relative to dems:

1. Still not well known or comfortably familiar. Easily fixable.

2. Damaged by the fears raised/stirred by the primary. Probably the toughest to fix.

3. The subject of persistent scurrilous rumors. Probably not fixable either, but not affect a large number of voters.

4. Running against the absolute best GOP chance in this election. Can be fixed with well-done attack ads.

I agree with Iggy Pop - great post. Assuming this country will elect a black guy is not smart, it will be a miracle.

I'll can't be comfortable with the validity of polls that show 8%, 10%, 12% or more that isn't in the McCain or Obama column. Especially states that show a significant percentage are still "Unsure" with pollsters  and those states were decided in the past two cycles by under 5 points. Few of the swing states that I consider necessary to Obama show him with a lead that is greater than still fickle responders.

I've not had anyone explain why I should have confidence in a survey that indicates a candidate has a 3-4 point lead and shows 10% or more are not sure. Further, McCain has proved to be resilient and has rebounded after a couple of impressive bumps-spikes in Obama's numbers.

For me? I have less of a problem with volatility & accuracy of polls or even the length of time between now and the election. Polls mean little so long as there are too many voters up for grabs. In too many states I'm unable to draw any current conclusions let alone begin predicting. When a state poll indicates a lead of 3% or even 5% it has little value to me when 10% or more are unsure,

The only way that you could say that a candidate is undermining the advantage that his party has over the other party on a generic ballot  is if the candidate, or his candidacy, (and for that matter his opponent) are themselves pretty generic.  We're not running Harry Reid against Mitch McConnell.  We're running a black freshman Senator rockstar who might be a crazy Muslim socialist, against Mr. Maverick geriatric war hero who mixes up what countries do and do not exist.  We are doing this during two wars.  Good grief.  There's going to be plenty of 'noise', and plenty of reasons for it.

I have absolutely no problems with the fact that Obama is doing less well in the polls than people would like given the current strength of the Democratic Party. His skin color is clearly an electoral risk. But when else other than when the Party itself is popular can a major party risk nominating the first non-white candidate in the history of the nation. We all know that some Americans will not vote for Obama because of his skin color - just as some Americans would not have voted for Hillary Clinton because she is a woman. It is inevitable, in these circumstances, that the party will be more popular than the candidate - but that is a risk that needs to be taken in a democratic nation wishing to prove that its electoral process is neither racist nor sexist.

The Democratic Party has done its part with the nomination of Obama. Now the rest of the nation needs to show that it has grown above and beyond the racism still demonstrated by some and that it can and will elect the man who is easily the best candidate in this election - Barack Obama.

I'm sorry, but I thought the president was elected by the electoral college and not a head-to-head popular vote matchup.  (Just ask Al Gore.)  By that measure, the pollster.com composite has Obama crushing McCain 306 to 172, with 60 electoral votes up for grabs.  That's a 134 electoral vote lead.  And it get's worse.  McCain's support is soft.  Looking at states with "strong" leads, he trails 260 to 97 - 163 electoral votes behind.

You can try to diminsh that by looking at the composite national number or hypothetical matchups, but right now McCain is in big trouble.  All those Clinton states did not swing into his column, and he still doesn't have a convincing line of attack against Obama.  None of this is to say it's in the bag, but there are fact-based demonstrable grounds for saying that Obama is in the lead and that things look bad for McCain.

Tep, you really have no clue about the Europeans you love to disparage. I fit your Kreuzberger bill; I've always voted Green, and have accordingly taken part in many demonstrations. I have never seen an AmeriKKKa banner. Not once, period.

Meanwhile, if Obama gives an open-air speech here, he will probably attract tens of thousands of curious onlookers, from all across the demographics. His appeal is pretty much across-the-board; opinion polls in countries like Germany, Holland, France are showing that he'd get something between two-thirds and 80% of the vote in Western Europe. So you can be sure that this event wont look anything like some CND peace camp or Berlin's May Day riots.

To assume that the crowds gathering to listen to Obama will be colourfully typified by Kreuzbergers with interesting facial jewelry and PLO flags is to betray a laughably caricatural perception.

Jo, you're Dutch, right? I'm talking about a) street theatre, not firebombs, and b) the Kreuzberg neighborhood of Berlin that I remember from my [shudder] affair with schatze Rita, the Berlin SDP organizer, in the mid 90s. I vividly recall her hippie pal singing "Ho, Ho Ho Chi Minh!" on the tram (I kid you not). Yes, she/he were mildly nuts (although very nice). No, they were not viewed as such by their Kreuzberg coterie.

Thursday linkage

Just wait until the debates.

Echoing Judis and Chait from yesterday, here's more evidence that, despite the media's and even