Posted on 10/19/2008 11:38:32 PM PDT by Chet 99
Obama set to visit Madison this Thursday By: Megan Orear /The Daily Cardinal - October 20, 2008
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is scheduled to visit Madison Thursday, though the event comes as a surprise as he currently is leading Republican opponent John McCain in the state of Wisconsin.
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama will stop at a rally in Madison Thursday with less than two weeks until Election Day, his campaign announced Friday.
The event will be held at 11 a.m. at the Capitol Square where Main Street intersects Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.
Phil Walzak, communications director for Obama’s campaign in Wisconsin, said Obama is visiting because the race in Wisconsin is still competitive.
“Wisconsin remains a very important swing state, it’s a very close election with so much at stake,” Walzak said.
According to Walzak, Obama’s visit will focus on the contrast between his economic plan and that of Republican presidential candidate John McCain.
“I think it’s interesting that he’s coming to Madison considering it’s already so liberal; it doesn’t really seem like a big battleground area to visit,” said UW-Madison senior Katie Nix, state chair of Students for McCain.
According to Pollster.com, a website that follows polling trends, Wisconsin polls over the past month collectively show Obama leading by an average of about 11 points.
Nix said although the presidential race in Wisconsin is not very close in the polls, it has always been close historically and Obama is likely trying to secure his base by visiting Thursday.
Claire Rydell, chair of UW-Madison College Democrats, said the event will provide an “extra boost of energy” for Obama’s campaign going into the final election days.
This will be Obama’s first Madison visit since he spoke on campus in February, an event that filled the Kohl Center beyond capacity.
“I hope that this will be the final push that students need to get excited and mobilize for Election Day,” said Ami ElShareif, chair of UW-Madison Students for Obama.
If McCain or Palin return to WI, you’ll know both campaigns are seeing internals way different from the media polls.
very interesting.
something in the internal polls has Obama team anxious about WISC.
and what was Biden doing in Washington??
There is no way Obama would be campaigning in WI if he had the big lead that many (bogus) state by state polls says he had. In both of the last two Presidential elections, the vote was extremely close. Kerry won the state by only 11,000 votes (out of almost 3 million cast). In 2000, Gore won by only 5,000 votes out of almost 2.5 million.
I can sort of understand running campaign ads but making a visit?
Or is he? WI was extremely razor thin close in both 2000 and 2004. Campaigning in WI is something you do if the national race is very close. If you are really up by the 5-10 points that the media says you are, you should be spending more time in red states.
Just stopping a moment to play devil’s advocate... but perhaps he’d go just to get another mass rally publicity moment? It shouldn’t be too hard on a college campus.
That would seem to be a big waste of time that could possibly backfire on him with GOPers (who will get that much more angry and determined to vote) and many Independents.
I wonder if this is more like this weekend’s St Louis (Mondale-style) photo-op rally? Go stage a rally where your base is strong so you can draw a big crowd and pump up your troops? If Obama is worried about WI then he’s in big trouble. I’m not sure just yet.
The campaign travel schedules sure make it hard to game where the polls really stand... IN, ME, NE, FL, MO, NC, PA, OH, FL, WI ??
McCain sure hasn’t pushed back on the idea that he’s really down six in the polls. He seems to even embrace it. Meanwhile, after strutting around like victory is inevitable, Biden and Obama have both begun to warn about overconfidence.
Bring your Plunger!!!
I’M JOE THE PLUMBER!
I don’t want to sound like a Pollyana, which is why I spend so much time analyzing all these polls and comparing them to actual exit poll and turnout data from actual electoins. Yes, I have a dog in the fight (to be more precise, a certain pit bull with lipstick), but I want to get this election right, no matter what the right answer is.
I am convinced that McCain is playing possum. He knows he isn’t behind by six points. I think he knows what I think I have figured out: that the race right now is razor close, but most of the remaining undecideds are voters who voted for Bush in 2004 and will ultimately break mostly for McCain. He knows that turnout is going to be much more like 2004 (around 53-56% of voting age population) and that if that happens, he wins.
I think the Obama campaign knows it too. They are doing what the Bush campaign did eight years ago. They are trying to convey the notion that their victory is inevitable, perhaps because they see victory starting to slip away as all those remaining voters in mostly Bush demographics are now beginning to make their decisions.
To win, Obama needs either to drive turnout up to 60% with all those yoots and newly registered minority voters, or alternatively they need to drive turnout down to around 50% or lower the 1996 and 2000 levels) by trying to discourage McCain supporters from voting at 2004 levels. They know that the “new voters” will not turn out, so I think they are resorting to the later strategy. It’s the exact same strategy that the Bush campaign resorted to in the last week of the 2000 campaign, when they were in a very similar position as Obama is today — having to rely upon yoots and new voters as well as large likely turnout by the opposition.
I remember 2000 all too well. Bush had been trailing Gore through September, and then overtook him in October by hefty margins. In the final week, Bush was campaigning in California and New Jersey. Gore was campaigning nonstop 24/7 like a madman. His final rally brought him to Iowa at 4am in the snow and rain.
I went through the TIPP website through archive.org and they have this interesting write-up on the closing days. Sadly, the graphs no longer work:
http://web.archive.org/web/20010203001500/tipponline.com/elect/other/trends.htm
Just to give you an idea of how fast things can close, the below is a writeup TIPP did on its final poll result for 2000. (Yes, there was the DUI in the mix here).
http://web.archive.org/web/20010206053409/tipponline.com/elect/other/final.htm
BUSH HAS 2-POINT EDGE ON ELECTION DAY
Final IBD/CSM/TIPP Tracking Poll Shows
Today, Election Day, George W. Bush is ahead with a slim 2-point lead over Al Gore, the gap narrowing from a comfortable 9-point advantage Bush had on Saturday. The final result of what is the last of a series of daily tracking polls conducted for TIPP’s media partners is: Bush 47.9%, Gore 46.0%, Nader 3.7%, Other Candidates 2.4%.
The last 48 hours prior to Election Day saw dramatic changes in the run for the White House. After a neck-and-neck race during most of October, Bush secured a comfortable lead at the end of the month and maintained at least 5-points over the Vice President up until this past weekend.
Throughout this last week, Mr. Gore was struggling to break the 43-point resistance level (a known ceiling seen in the IBD/TIPP MetaPoll, a measure published since July 2000, which consolidates all leading national polls, weighting for accuracy, polling population and recentness.)
Things began to change during Sunday night’s polling, when Gore saw a surge in enthusiasm by Democrats, which continued into Monday night. The breakout was heavy, with a steady upward movement from 39% on Saturday to 42% on Sunday and 46% on Monday night.
Regionally, Gore consolidated his Northeast lead, while at the same time making substantial gains in the West in the last days of the campaign. Bush continued to lead comfortably in both the Midwest and the South.
Bush continues to lead among the large bloc of Investor Class voters (55% of likely voters, a group which we identified in the Voice of the Investor Class IBD/TIPP poll and which we tracked during this entire election season), although Gore made some gains among this group in the last days of the campaign.
Of 1,891 adults surveyed nationwide by telephone from November 4 to 6, 1,292 were classified as “likely voters.” The sampling error for the responses is plus or minus 2.8 percentage points.
The final results of the IBD/TIPP MetaPoll show Bush edging out Gore by 1 percentage point, 47% to 46%.
Exactly - if he’s behind in the state, why else would he preach to the choir in lib-land Madison, rather than non-arugula eating areas??
I’M WITH JOE!.. This theme needs to go big very fast... I’M WITH JOE!
Freepers need to spread the word in every place there is a MAC or BO raly. Purchase plungers and make signs in this theme to take to your rallies.
We are all plumbers now that need to unclog the system from impending over-taxation (Socialism) and the legalized ‘theft’ of our hard earned income.
Call to MAC/Palin/Republican campaigns and organize people to go with you.
If you are going to bring a plunger, remember that you can’t bring the stick part into a rally. {So if you are staying outside a BO rally when he comes later this week, that’s fine. ) If you are headed into the rally, you need to replace the stick with rolled corrogated paper carried separately until you’re in the rally.
This theme needs to be the universal cry against Socialism and carries the implicit message of unclogging the “waste’ from the system.
A dozen guys with plungers just freeped outside a BO rally in VA!
Support Joe, the first average Joe to stand up to the tyranny of neo-Marxism! Also, Phil the bricklayer signs showed up at a Palin rally. (Can anyone say—> Bob the Builder!)
JOE could obtain security clearance to be a White House plumber. Could barack, with his cadre of nefarious friends?
Bonus: We can shout his middle name, “JOE” outloud fear of taking a LEAD PIPE to the knees! Try and escape the wrath of the Left if you are bold enough to utter.......barack HUSSEIN obama.
Would that be the Madison, WI?
That’s strange. He has that all sewn up, doesn’t he?
Or is he just so cocky that he now has time to stump for Senate or House Democrats?
Or just trying to manipulate a huge crowd with Greek columns.
Our biggest hurdle here will be massive fraud in Milwaukee and Madison.
McCain wrote off Wisconsin last week. RNC, too. I doubt they're doing any more internal polls.
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