Presently, we show John McCain with a 5.9 percent chance of winning
the Electoral College, a figure that will seem implausibly low to many
of you. But here's a bit of context from John Harwood at the New York Times:
In
the latest Gallup tracking poll, Mr. Obama leads Mr. McCain 50 percent
to 43 percent among registered voters. Mr. McCain’s deficit in that
survey has remained seven percentage points or more for most of the
last two weeks.
Since Gallup began presidential polling in 1936,
only one candidate has overcome a deficit that large, and this late, to
win the White House: Ronald Reagan, who trailed President Jimmy Carter
47 percent to 39 percent in a survey completed on Oct. 26, 1980.
There
were 18 elections between 1936 and 2004, and in just one of those --
the 1980 race that Harwood mentions -- did a trailing candidate come
back from a deficit this large in mid-October to win the election. One
divided into 18 is 5.6 percent, which almost exactly matches our 5.9
percent estimate for Mr. McCain.
There
has also been at least one other election in which a candidate made up
at least 7 points worth of ground this late, albeit in a losing effort.
That was 1968, when Hubert Humphrey had trailed by 15 in Gallup's poll
in early October, and 8 points in late October, but wound up losing the
election by less than a point. (If you want to see all these numbers
for yourself, by the way, Gallup has them here).
Gerald
Ford in 1976 also made up significant ground in his re-election bid
with Jimmy Carter, but most of that came in August and September. By
the first few days of October, Ford had already cut Carter's advantage
by 2 points -- the margin he eventually lost by. Ford than made another
mini-comeback after Carter's lead expanded again to 6 points, but it
wasn't enough to save his re-election bid.
Harwood also mentions
Al Gore's comeback in 2000, although that is harder to evaluate since
the Gallup poll was exceptionally erratic that year (Gore trailed Bush
by an average of 3 points over all polls that Gallup conducted that
October). The Pew poll,
which was far more stable, showed Gore with small leads in early- and
mid- October, although Bush had pulled 2 points ahead by the end of the
month.
If 1980 and 1968 do offer a couple of favorable
precedents for McCain, they also come with some caveats. If 1980 is the
template, it's not clear which candidate gets to play Ronald Reagan,
who on the surface would seem to share more circumstances in common
with Barack Obama. Although it's relatively uncommon for a candidate
who is already ahead to further build his lead in late October (1936
and 1988 fit this definition, but only to a degree), there is
nevertheless no guarantee that the next large momentum swing -- if
there is one at all -- will favor McCain. And secondly, McCain could
very easily come close without winning. The chances are significantly
greater than 5.9 percent that McCain will come close enough to make Obama sweat, but like Ford or Humphrey, he might wind up a little short.
Ford,
Humphrey, and Reagan, also, did not have to deal with early voting,
whereas McCain is pushing back against the fact that Obama is banking
votes every day with a substantial national lead. And McCain's deficit
in the key battleground states
exceeds that in the country as a whole, such that Obama, by our math,
has the equivalent of a 1-2 point buffer zone in the Electoral College.
If he were to come back, McCain's fate could very easily resemble that
of Humphrey, who lost the popular vote by just seven-tenths of a point
to Richard Nixon but was beaten handily among the 538 electors.
--Nate Silver