Caution: momentum shift in progress

Due to a little discussed problem with national and state polling, it would seem that most election prediction sites are greatly over estimating Sen. Barack Obama's lead.

Now, I stand behind my prediction that Obama wins the election, and I stand by my prediction that he gets 313 electoral college votes. But, due to a lag in polling that runs several days behind, I think some sights are discounting McCain's claims that the race is tightening.

The national polls are usually conducted over the course of two days, sometimes three. Those polls are then published in the following days after the polling organization gets a chance to crunch the data. The state polls are conducted in basically the same way.

The "current" polls therefore, are actually from several days ago - mostly from over the weekend. Polling from the end of last week and the weekend shows that Obama's lead is still stable. But they also show a change in direction. Averaged together, Obama's lead is now 6.5 nationally, a slight down-tick since last week. As I have stated many times, polls are better at showing trends and direction than they are at predicting the outcome of anything - particularly in politics.

Unfortunately, most of the data geeks are not reporting on what seems to be a momentum shift. The frenetic pace of Obama's campaign has slowed considerably over the last week, and I, like some of the conservative analysts, see the race tightening a bit.

I am also concerned a great deal about the tendency of pollsters and data geeks to over-estimate the shift in voter turnout models towards the Democrats. Most pollsters adjust their samples to account for what they think the actual voter turnout will look like. Last year, the models held them roughly even. This year, nearly all have adjusted for increased numbers of registered Democrats - some by silly margins.

Nate Silver, at fivethirtyeight.com, aggregates and averages these polls to reach conclusions about how the electoral college will shake out. Electoral-vote.com does the same. The problem is that they are relying too heavily on models that may be over-estimating Democratic turnout. Add to that, a lag in both the polling data and the effect of those polls on their electoral-college models they use (which again average recent polls per state to compensate for wild swings and outliers), and you get predictions that show Obama in a landslide where he gets more than 350 electoral college votes.

That may very well be the case. But, I for one, am not all that confident in the voter turnout models. Couple that with a shift in momentum, that will become apparent in the next few days, and I think there is sufficient reason to believe that the election could be close.

That said, I do stand by my original prediction of 313 for Obama - meaning he wins NM, CO, VA and FL in addition to the states that John Kerry won in 2004. I am growing less confident, however, about Florida (but I still believe Obama can hold on). Since I made that initial projection, Ohio has actually moved further towards Obama. At this point, those two states could go either way.

In the end, all that matters, really, are New Mexico, Colorado and Virgina. If Obama wins two of those states, plus the Kerry states, he wins. And I think that is exactly what will happen.

McCain taking talking points from AM radio Hosts

"'Member the good ol' days" when the conservative media pundits on FOX and on AM radio took their marching orders from the White House, or from Bush's re-election campaign?

Well, those days are gone.

Now, information flows in the other direction. It has repeatedly amused me this year, to watch Sen. John McCain taking his marching orders from the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage. It would seem that every time McCain takes a dip in the polls, he turns on his radio to the latest talking points from the likes of Laura Ingram, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Neal Boortz.

See, I'm one of those liberals that likes to listen to conservative AM radio. It's partly for the sake of a good laugh, but it's also to see what they are up to.

During the 2004 election, and every day until the last year or so, conservative pundits received their talking points directly from the White House. It was obvious. Bush would give a speech laced with is usual catch phrases and the conservative media and FOX news would repeat it over and over again until it just felt like the truth when you heard it.

By contrast, McCain has been the receiver and repeater. Just today, after conservatives had been clamoring for weeks, McCain decided to mention that if Obama wins, we would have a Democratic Legislature and a a Democratic executive, thus, having Democrats dominate government.

A little slow on the uptake John?

It's not exactly a frightening scenario for me, but for many Americans, balance is very important. For that reason, it could be an effective argument.

But, what's funny, is that it may be too late.

On my way back from New Mexico on Sunday night (wonderful trip by the way), I heard one particularly mean spirited conservative radio host declare that McCain was "too stupid to get elected." After ranting on and on about how poorly McCain has campaigned, the host was forced to concede, on air, that perhaps McCain was "too stupid to be president."

But that didn't stop him from urging his listeners to vote for him anyway. And there is the difference between those crazies and everyone else: they would rather have a stupid conservative president (that worked out well) than a smart liberal president. Sort of dampens enthusiasm for their opinion. Huh?

Anchorage Daily News snubs Palin, endorses Obama

In recent weeks, Obama has received windfall of newspaper endorsements. The Anchorage Daily News joined the club on Sunday, endorsing Obama because of his "steady hand."