Perhaps the CBS poll
that shows Barack Obama with a 14-point lead among likely voters (12
points when third-party candidates are included) is a modest outlier.
But if so, John McCain has more and more outliers that he has to
explain away these days. There are now no fewer than seven
current national polls that show Obama with a double-digit advantage:
Newsweek (+11), ABC/Post (+10), Democracy Corps (+10), Research 2000
(+10), Battleground (+13), Gallup (+10 using their Likely Voter II
model) and now this CBS News poll.
These
are balanced by other results that show the race a hair tighter. Our
model now projects that, were an election held today, Obama would win
by 8.1 points. It also expects that the race is more likely than not to
tighten some.
Nevertheless, we are a full month beyond the
Lehman Brothers collapse in mid-September. Obama has enjoyed quite a
remarkable run, turning a 2-point deficit into an 8-point advantage.
What's especially remarkable about it is that Obama's lead has
continued to increase with an eerily consistency. The collapse itself
precipitated an almost immediate 3 or 4 point gain in Obama's poll
numbers, moving him from a point or so down to a point or so ahead. But
since then, Obama has won news cycle after news cycle, adding another
two points or so to his national lead every week.
It's fairly
unusual for a candidate to have such a sustained run of momentum like
this so deep into the campaign cycle. And it does appear to be real
momentum, with some real feedback loops: the worse McCain's poll
numbers become, the more desperate his campaign looks, and the more
desperate his campaign looks, the worse his poll numbers become.
McCain
now has to go on a run of his own, a large enough run to wipe at least
8 points off of Obama's lead, and perhaps more like 9 or 10 to cover
his inferior position in the Electoral College and the votes that Obama
is banking in early and absentee balloting. It is imperative that
McCain does not just draw tomorrow night's debate, does not just win a
victory on points, but emerges with a resounding victory, the sort that
leaves the spin room gasping for air. Failing that, we are getting into
dead girl, live boy territory.
Let's look at the polls:
The state polls don't present a much brighter picture for McCain. In particular, the Quinnipiac
set of polling, showing large leads for Obama in Colorado, Michigan,
Minnesota and Wisconsin, is bad news for him. Note that Quinnipiac
conducted two separate sets of polling both before and after last
week's debate, with the debate only seeming to consolidate Obama's
advantage.
Pennsylvania, meanwhile, where SurveyUSA has Obama sustaining a 15-point lead, may be joining Michigan as a state which is completely out of reach to McCain. Ohio
is still within reach -- and the fact that it's lagging a couple of
points behind Obama's national numbers is reason for McCain not to give
the state especial concern -- but clearly now seems to lean toward
Obama. The Suffolk result in Colorado is a little better for McCain than the Quinnipiac numbers, at least, and PPP
has Obama moving slightly off his peak in North Carolina, although that
may only be because McCain has finally started to invest resources
there that he'd rather be spending everywhere else: the Tarheel State
has served its purpose for Obama, whether or not he ultimately wins it.
--Nate Silver