My God!  The days of wine and roses are over.  From here on it will be a slow, painful, Bataan Death March of a campaign, as the Obama types slowly but surely fall to the mightly sage and protector, John "Please Call Me Leonidas - Only this Time We Actually Will Beat the Heathen Persians" McCain.

Tis true, all is lost. I vote that Obama should open his wrists on public television, claiming that he wants a quick release from the unrelenting dynamo that is the man from Arizona.  The gulls are calling from beyond the Western shore.  End it quickly so as to spare us the pain and torment of a campaign that is so naive that it doesn't even know that it is going to be beaten.

....Or, we can remind Mr. Silver that is August! AUGUST!  I know, I know, this is what you do, but my goodness, how about just dropping the numbers on us, giving us a bit of information regarding the polls themselves, perhaps information from secondary questions, cool stuff from the cross-tabs, etc.  Mayhap we could refrain from the excessive hand-wringing, especially as it relates to the day to day grind of an election wherein the vast majority of the people haven't even realized that an election is being held this year.

Michigan should be easy pickings for McCain. Putin's cast McCain in the role of Reagan, compared to Bush-Obama-Carter. Oakland County will be the bellwether.

I live in a very blue state, and there is definitely a cooling off taking place about Obama. I remember reading an analysis during the primaries that pointed out that there was an inverse relationship between how much time Obama spent in a state and how well he did there. I sense some of the same phenomenon happening now--the more people look at Obama the less excited they are by what they see.

A rigorous measure of whether Obama actually does worse when he is looked at more will be the reaction to his Invesco speech. The net effect of this massive exposure, say one week after the event itself, will tell us a lot about how people feel about Obama when they look at and consider him for a while. People may like the idea of Obama more than the reality.

Eos, you're misremembering the analysis during the primaries.  Then it was the longer Obama spent campaigning in a state, the BETTER he polled.

Tep, you WANT Russia to be a factor in November, but wanting it won't make it so.

Obama's got an ace in the hole in Michigan and that's the couple hundred thousand Negroes in Detroit, Flint, and elsewhere who haven't voted in any of the past 4 or 5 presidential elections but will get out on a Tuesday for the chance to pull the level for a brown skinned man.  Same thing in Virginia.  

Your whole model is wrong.  Probably because you yourself are conflicted about the available choices,  think the game is all in changing people's minds.  It ain't.  Obama and McCain are so distinct from one another both personally and politically, that most people already have a pretty clear idea as to whom they'll vote for.  The real key to this election--as in most recent elections--is going to be turnout.  Keep right on banging that Russia drum, tep, but the number of folks who're going to say "I was going to vote for Obama but now because of Putin, I'm going for McCain" is small, and the number who are going to say, "Russia makes it critical that I get out and vote for McCain even though my rheumatism is playing up" is microscopic.

But as I said elsewhere, let's put some money on it.

Ah, aeromonas--

You WISH I were remembering incorrectly, but I am not. To render it more precisely--the finding was specifically that the number of visits Obama made to a state was inversely related to how well he did there. The illusion held by many supporters of Obama was that as he campaigned more, he did better  (Everywhere I go becomes ObamaLand after I've been there," said the candidate.). But that was lllusion and wishful thinking, not borne out by the facts. Just look at the results of the last ten or twelve hotly contested primaries, most of which he lost. Conversely, he won in caucuses where he rarely campaigned in person. And the trend of this summer is that the more exposure he gets, the closer the polls get.

Trust me, aero, it's the last thing on earth I'd have wanted.

Eos:

Go to pollster.com. Spend like 2 minutes there looking a charts for primary states

Obama's move to the "center" obviously hasn't gotten him any added votes. Remember that the Republicans did not rise to power by adopting the most unoffensive centrist positions they could think of. Power comes from ideology, and ideology comes from distinction.

It is becoming increasingly possible for Obama to lose this election, and he will, unless he remembers how he got the nomination and what inspired people before.

"the number of folks who're going to say 'I was going to vote for Obama but now because of Putin, I'm going for McCain' is small... "

No, the issue is the number of folks who * * * are now saying * * *  "I can't tell my pro-Obama friends this, but Obama's not ready for the WH, and I find terrifying the prospect of Obama going up against Putin, Hu, Ajad et al" is large, and growing. Enough to tip FL for sure, probably also at least one, likely two or more, of CO, MI, OH, PA.

VirginaCentrist:

hmmm..let's see. Beginning in the back half of the primary campaign from March 4th onward, Clinton won the primaries in Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas, Pennsylvania, Indiana, West Virginia, Kentucky, Puerto Rico, and Soutrh Dakata. In the same period, Obama won the primaries in Vermont, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oreogn, and Montana. That's nine primary victories for Clinton in the second half of the primary season to five primary victories for Obama.

So, your point about the charts is exactly what???

Mr. Cautious Optimist, here.  From the CO story, "Obama led McCain 56 percent to 34 percent among voters under 35 years of age and McCain led Obama 51 percent to 34 percent among those 65 and older." Not really news. But they polled 500 people & I'm waiting for someone to explain how anyone can can have confidence that an '08 survey is choosing the correct formula so age, party ID and weighing turnout will reflect those dynamics in November. Nate only relays the data but someone could easily explain how the recipe for those 500 people better match the who and how many vote because a minor goof in the 'who and how many' renders this result meaningless.  

Explain to me how (of those 500 in the survey) someone reaches students in transition? In Mid-August, where are the Freshman not to mention Spring grads who can be anywhere? Do August vacation patterns differ between 65+ and everyone else?

In '00, Gore lost (738,000) and Kerry pulled over one million...and lost. But the Dem Governor won in '06 with 888,000 and a Dem lost four years earlier....only 475,00?!  It seem to be a volatile electorate over eight years & someone is certain 'who and how many' will show up for Barack?  Hey, they can be dead on (80 days out) and only need 500 answers to crystal ball how 2 million people will vote?

When someone convinces me they know who will show on 11-4, then I'll panic or celebrate. Any numbers now need to account for the impact of new and younger and I doubt that is possible. Or, point me to the person who can prove what new and the under 35 will do...

Eos seems to be assuming that the fact that Obama campaigned hard in states that he was way behind in and made several of them close is somehow the same thing as an inverse correlation between the time he spent in the state and his odds of winning. It's technically accurate, but misses the point. HIs campaigning in those states didn't CAUSE him to lose them. he was always going to lose Indiana for example. But his active campaigning in those states dropped his margins to much lower than his starting point. Sure, if he hadn't campaigned at all in those states, it would have "disproved" Eos's theory. But that theory is a very strange one. Its' akin to assuming that the fact that more people die in advanced specialty hospitals proves that such hospitals are dangerous.

Obama campaigned in places that he started way behind in and made several of those races much closer than they would have been. In a proportional representation primary, that's exactly what one needs to do. Which is why his "loss" in Indiana turned out to be the point at which he actually won the nomination.

Re Indiana -- Obama thought he'd win that one:

www.politico.com/.../Obamas_projections.html

Ditto for South Dakota.

Sorry, tep, I may not have made myself clear.  I didn't mean to suggest that you're happy things are going pear shaped in the Caucasus.  You'd be right to take such a suggestion as an insult.  Please believe me that that is NOT what I intended.

What I meant was that I think you want Russia's adventurism and Putin's thuggishness to matter as much to the American electorate as it matters to you.  I understand that desire.  And I'll even concede that Russia may--underline 'may'--have had some influence on these recent polls.  I just don't see it making much of a difference on November 4.  

But I'm about to make a pledge:

From here on out, I will no longer debate questions related to the likely outcome of the November elections.  I'm boring even myself.  And really it's pretty silly to argue such questions anyway.  Each of us has his own gestalt on how this election will play out.  Some of us will be proven right and some proven wrong, and we know exactly how long we have to wait until we have an answer.  

I must say, that I'm a little bummed that with the whole drilling debate, even The Vine has been sucked into the whole campaign strategy vortex.  Let's talk about other things:

Georgia

Darfur

The economy

Taxes

Afghanistan

HIV/AIDS

And to the degree that we feel compelled to implicated either presidential candidate in our discussion, let's talk about policy not the horse race.

Not that I expect much to change 'round here.

aero - this crisis will only intensify between now and Nov. 4 for the simple reason that Putin and his goons are determined not to climb down. They want a confrontation with Ukraine, and Ukraine is not a piss--poor little backwater like Georgia. The flash point is Crimea. No way that Russia will give it up, and no way that Ukraine can sacrifice it and remain a self-respecting independent nation. This is a huge  test, for everyone involved - Putin, Yushchenko, the Germans, the US. It won't be defused before November.

Micelf:

You are quite right that the inverse correlation can result from many causes, and it does not prove that his campaigning hurt him. But, on the face of things, the fact that he devoted the most resources (i.e., visits) to places where he lost is not an argument against the negative causal effects of his campaigning either. In general, unfortunately, as Obama has become better known he has done more poorly. That is my general point--that he appeals more as an idea than as an actuality.

With Reagan in 1980, the more the voters saw of him, the less scared they were, and the more they liked what they saw. With Obama in 2008 the opposite is happening.

Frankly the thought of four more years of Obama-Bush cluelessness re Putin scares a lot of over-35 voters out of their skins. Obama-Bush's response to this watershed event tells them all they need to know about the wisdom of yet again electing an outsider with no real depth on foreign policy or national security matters.

What really scares over-35 voters is healthcare costs, drug costs, retirement costs, etc. We don't give a rat's ass about Georgia (they're going to lose to Florida anyway...Urban Meyer will see to that).  The Dems will still win this if they hang Social Security privatiziation and McCain's multiple houses around his neck.  How did Sherrod Brown win in Ohio?  Play that game again.

Michael asks how surveys reach students in transition.  The real question is how students do or do not get to the polls.  They are moving/not registered/too busy studying for a midterm/don't know where they are registered/lost the absentee ballot..... I could go on and own.  In 2000, of the 25 students in my class, only one voted (and she was in her 30s).  

In Feb, the Washington Post (if I recall correctly) polled those voters who were very likely to vote--it was 66 percent for under 30,  but something like 70 percent for 65+.  The same poll was conducted a few weeks ago.  The over 65 crowd remained the same, but the under 30 cohort dropped to 46 percent (about what it was in 2004).  The lesson is, if Obama depends on the student vote, he is doomed. They might just sleep through the whole election.