Cross-posted at Election inspection
Alright, I know that Rasmussen's daily tracking poll has shown McCain open up a one-point lead (even ignoring Gallup's tracking poll showing Obama by three) so I'd like to take this opportunity to let the people who think this is the end of the world know that it's the summer, polling now does not really tell you what is going to happen in November, especially considering how little people are paying attention now. Now, I've heard arguments that at this point in time in 2004, John Kerry held a lead over George Bush, yet was ultimately defeated in November. Just so we can get a solid answer, I went to the archives of RCP to check out polling during the same period of time. I found eleven polls which coincide roughly with the same period now (the earliest poll was taken by Newsweek between 7/29 and 7/30 and the latest two were by Time/SRBI and AP/Ipsos taken between 8/3 and 8/5). During this period, John Kerry held a lead in nine of the polls, George Bush held a lead in one and in the last one there was a tie, on average Kerry held a 2.9 point lead. Now, looking at RCP's current average, with 8 polls, Obama has a 2.7 point lead and is winning in six surveys while McCain leads in the other two. According to Pollster, Obama right now has a 2.2 point lead.
This may seem like it's winding up to turn-out exactly the same as in 2004, with the Republican managing to pull off a slight win in November, but there is a very big difference between then and now, namely that during that same period in 2004, the Democrats had already held their nominating convention, while the Republicans had not. In the week right before the nominating convention (the earliest poll taken by Marist between 7/12 and 7/15 and the latest by ABC/Washington Post between 7/22 and 7/25), John Kerry held an average lead of 1 with Kerry leading in nine polls and Bush leading in two. This also seems to confirm that Kerry had a (slight) lead over George Bush throughout the month of July and with only a modest change due to the nominating convention, but for Kerry, the month of July (when he announced John Edwards as his running mate and when the Democrats held their convention) was the high water mark of his campaign. If you don't believe me, just look at the eleven polls taken before Kerry announced his running mate (earliest one is IBD/TIPP taken between 6/8 and 6/13 and the latest being ARG taken between 7/1 and 7/3). In this set of polls, Bush held an average lead of 2 points against Kerry with Bush leading in nine of the eleven polls and Kerry leading in only two. So, point in fact, June's numbers from 6/8 on gave Bush a modest 2 point lead (for the entire month of June, Bush led by 0.7 points).
Now, one very big difference between now and the time period four years ago is that since June, is in the consistency of polling showing Obama's lead over McCain compared to Kerry's lead over Bush over the same time period. In 2004, between the start of June and the start of July, in 45 polls taken, John Kerry had a lead in 27 polls (60% of polls) Bush had a lead in 16 (35% of polls) and there were ties in 2 (4%). In 2008, of 40 polls taken from early June to early August, Obama is leading in 38 (95% of polls) and McCain has led in only 2 (5% of polls) by the way, of those two polls, one of those polls has serious volatility problems and the second is a daily tracking poll which there is only one day where McCain has a lead (and where it is already contradicted by another daily tracking poll).
Now, much of this might have to do with McCain having a more aggressive ad campaign going right now than Obama, but consider this: Obama has been substantially out-spending McCain on putting down field staff and organization on the ground. Last month, Sean over at 538 wrote an excellent piece about the virtues of a solid ground organization, and I'd like to point to something which is of particular interest:
Consider for a moment an oft-discussed example that directly relates to ground organizing – the burgeoning power of the Latino vote. High-information voters like you and I read stories about Obama or McCain each speaking to this or that Latino group, each man arguing why he is the better candidate to implement policies that will improve quality of life for Latinos. But which campaign is more likely to do the actual on-ground registration and one-to-one voter contact in places Latinos live, such as Nevada?
Whatever the ultimate election outcome, it’s clear the Obama campaign believes it knows what it’s doing and a wise investment of resources when it sees one. An "almost preternatural self-confidence about their strategy" is how Ambinder describes it.
And it makes sense; Obama’s team has been vindicated after undergoing months of second-guessing previously during this campaign. In the months before Iowa, outsiders and even supporters were questioning the campaign’s strategy in view of the consistent polling showing Obama lagging behind "where he should be." Obama’s team remained confident that those polls were Charmin-soft and Obama himself trusted his sense of meeting the moment, that the Democratic electorate was so hungry to turn the page that it would even turn the page on its biggest brand name.
Yet without the deep, well-planned and executed advance work, without having recruited and built the best on-ground political organizations in the key early states, this confidence would have been a false front. Obama likes to say he "made a bet" on the American people by entering the primary despite doing so as a conventional-wisdom prohibitive underdog, now he is making another bet, that the summer's silly season mini-narratives will be washed away in convention and debate drama, and that chance will favor the better organized in the end.
Over at The Field, Al Giordano has, what I believe, to be among the best responses to the overreacting back-seat political analysists (which he, rightly, expresses annoyance with fairly often) who think that Obama is having any real problems:
Summer in the United States is a dreadful time to be a political candidate, consultant, ad-maker, press secretary, policy analyst, fundraiser - or for that matter political reporter or blogger - because the news cycles slow to comatose with the breezeless so-thick-you-can-cut-a-knife-through-it August air.
All those people are dependent on public attention to get anything done at all. But teachers and students are on summer vacation, as are so many members of the professional classes that feed media crises and scandals during the rest of the year. Their email accounts are on automatic response: <span style="font-style: italic;">"I will be out of the office until...."</span> Every man and woman's life and property is safe, to paraphrase Mark Twain, because Congress is out of session. Even talk radio hosts are merely "phoning it in" this time of year, taking Fridays and Mondays off, grabbing those days of respite and calm that are so elusive for most of the rest of the year.
And for the many that can't afford a summer home or even a long weekend away - that struggling majority that the media doesn't care about anyway - the schools aren't available to baby-sit the kids, there's no air conditioner to help beat the heat, the pollen and the smog, those that live in tourist towns are working sunrise to sunset or waiting tables or bartending all night, there are weeds to be pulled and grass to be cut and arid fields to be irrigated: for the America that doesn't have a summer home, these months bring even harder work and longer hours.
As a result, it's impossible to focus national public attention on almost anything, no matter how prurient or scandalous: if you're going to get caught by tabloid stalkers with the mother of your love child in a Beverly Hills hotel, this is the perfect time of year to do it: nobody notices, and those few that notice don't give a damn. By Labor Day it will already be old news.
People need to chill out for a while and understand that we've got some time before anything is really being paid attention to, and understand that the most important game, that of getting organized on the ground, is one which Obama has a commanding edge over McCain.