Comparing 2008 and 2004

There's been a lot of talk lately about Obama slipping in the polls, and what that will mean come November. Now, I still think he's in the driver's seat, especially given that McCain has never really been anywhere near 50%. Reading some stuff at electoral-vote.com backs that up some. Here's a graph showing their electoral college numbers, assuming the polling data accurately reflects what's going on:



Clearly, you see Obama losing a lead there. And that's pretty comparable to what happened to Kerry in 2004:



That's scary, right? But there's a huge difference. Let's look at the same data, but get rid of the leaners, the states where the polling is within 5%:




What do we see here? Obama continues to widen his lead on McCain, while McCain stagnates almost 100 votes short. Obama needs a lot fewer things to break his way to get over the top. Again comparing that to 2004, we see that the situation there was fundamentally different:


http://electoral-vote.com/evp2008/Pres/ec_graph-2004-solid.png

By this time relative to the election (which was well after the swiftboating), Kerry wasn't anywhere near 270 when looking at the states he was doing well in, and Bush actually held the lead for a good chunk of the time as we got closer to the election.

The Speech

During Obama's acceptance speech last night, I liked it, but wasn't as blown away as I usually am. But in pondering it overnight, I think it was much better than I gave it credit for at the time. He kicked McCain's ass up one side of the stadium and down the other, was effective at not shying away from being a liberal, called McCain and the GOP out on their campaign tactics (I absolutely loved the line about making big elections about small things), laid out policy specifics, and didn't fucking smirk or giggle every time he delivered a good line. What was missing was the beautiful language and inspiring oratory that was, for example, the hallmark of his 2004 convention speech. However, while that stuff gets me going, and is the oratorical stuff dreams are made of for us liberal elite intellectuals, he needed to put his feet a little more on the ground and show those simpering moderates and undecideds that he had a real ground game. And, boy, does he.

Thank goodness that's over

Illinois yields to New York and Hillary moved that Obama be appointed the nominee by acclamation, and then they'll count all the delegates. Now they're playing "Love Train", for some silly reason.