Here's the long and short of it for John McCain: Barack Obama has as
large a lead in the election as he's held all year. But there is much
less time left on the clock than there was during other Obama periods
of strength, such as in February, mid-June or immediately following the
Democratic convention. This is a very difficult combination of
circumstances for him.
On the strength of a set of national tracking polls
that each show Obama at or near his high-water mark all year, our model
projects that he would win an election hold today by 4.2 points. It
discounts this lead slightly to a projected margin of 3.3 points on
November 4, as most races tend to tighten as we approach election day.
This
lead might not sound like that much, but it's fairly significant: we've
been through two conventions and one debate, voters have dug their
heels in, and Obama's position in the Electoral College is extremely
robust. Trimming away a 4-5 point lead isn't that difficult over the
summer months -- in fact, McCain accomplished exactly that in July and
August -- but it's a steeper hill to climb after Labor Day. And if
anything, our projection may be lowballing Obama slightly, as the
aforementioned national tracking data (which incorporates one day of
post-debate interviewing) has Obama's lead in the range of 5-8 points;
the model will need Obama to hold those numbers for another day or two
before it catches up to them.
Democrats have no reason to be
complacent. Although the situation looks dramatically better for them
than it did two weeks ago, so too have the stakes of the election
increased. The next president will face perhaps the most challenging
set of circumstances of any since Franklin Roosevelt, and could
potentially have nearly as much impact on the future direction of the
country. Obama could very easily lose, and even if he wins, odds are
that there will be at least one more swing back toward McCain in the
intervening 37 days. Nevertheless, as Isaac Chotiner suggests, I believe that the national punditry is understanding understating the difficulty of the position that McCain finds himself in (ed: I'm the Joe Biden of typos -- NRS).
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There is almost no action at the state level today. Mason-Dixon has John McCain ahead by 16 points in Tennessee and 12 in Kentucky; SurveyUSA has Obama up 16 in Connecticut.
Among these results, the only remotely interesting one is Kentucky, and
then only because it suggests that Obama might be able to avoid a
complete disaster in Southern Ohio.
--Nate Silver