Thursday 16 October 2008

Clean sweep for Obama

I haven't yet had a chance to see it, but the instant polls conducted after last night's final presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain indicate a pretty decisive victory for Obama.

Coming on top of victories in the previous two debates and also a win for Joe Biden in the vice-presidential debate against Sarah Palin, that makes it a clean sweep for the Obama ticket in the debates.

This was probably John McCain's last chance to swing the terms of the election his way. Having failed to do so, it's difficult to see what he can do to turn the situation around in the last two and a half weeks of campaigning. Short of Obama walking into a branch of McDonald's wearing a belt of explosives, I can't see anything stopping the Illinois Senator from coasting to victory.

Electoral Vote shows just how tough the prospect is for McCain. The headline figure on the project electoral college count is 352-171 in Obama's favour with 15 (North Carolina) down as tied. With Iowa and New Mexico looking like certain Democratic pick-ups, McCain could not afford to lose any of Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Missouri or Colorado if he wants to win. In all of those states, Obama is currently ahead.

That sound you can hear is the fat lady tuning up.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

No...........

It all looks good now, but we can't assume anything nearly 3 weeks out.

He's bound to go through some sort of swift boating. The McCain campaign will get nastier and nastier and some of it will be quite successful.

Let's not count any chickens just yet.

Bill said...

I watched some of it live last night and the rest on my DVR recording this morning. It seemed to me that McCain was rather petulant at times, trying to bait Obama into something he might regret later, but Obama simply remained calm and said what he had to say. There was back-biting on both sides at one point, but I'd say Obama did nothing negative and McCain certainly didn't advance his cause. However I'd caution against 'triumphalism'; none of us have votes there and those that do often have entrenched views. It remains to be seen how many of the 'floaters' or even some of those who normally vote Democrat will actually go into the polling booth and pull the lever for a 'black man', whatever they may have told pollsters; if Obama wins it will I suspect be much closer than the polls seem to predict.

Bernard Salmon said...

Bill, while there may indeed be some people who will not vote for a black candidate, I suspect that a lot of them are already McCainites, rather than saying they'll vote for Obama. I also suspect that they might well be neutralised by a much higher turnout among ethnic minority commmunities than there has been in previous elections. In addition, Obama seems to have a very impressive ground campaign, while his fundraising advantage means he's heavily outspending McCain on TV advertising.
Caron, I agree that the Republican campaign might well get nastier, but is there any reason to think that such attacks will have any more traction over the last couple of weeks than they have over the last few? Indeed, if anything, McCain's relentless negativity seems to have damaged his campaign rather than boosted it.

Unknown said...

I have just seen enough elections in my time go the opposite way that I can barely dare to think that Obama is actually going to win.

I've just bought Michael Moore's guide to the election - it has all his usual shades of humour, rant and occasional brilliant madness. It reminded me of how many times Democrats have been ahead and blown it at the last minute....

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