Posted on 09/22/2008 6:56:54 AM PDT by tatown
I hope Pawlenty can help McCain here in Minnesota. After all, he was one of the potential VP picks.
I just don’t hear too much from him. Probably the media ‘filter’. Our biggest paper, the Red Star Tribune, hates anything conservative.
Aha! You said the magic word: money
Obama must put stop money in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania just to keep himself safe. Then he has to put push money in Colorado to try and win.
McCain has to put stop money in Colorado, and can put push money in the rest of the States and hope one falls his way.
Once he sees an opening in one, he can redirect money towards it and overwhelm Obama's stop. Obama can't afford to shift stop money for fear that he looks like he is abandoning those States and depressing his GOTV effort.
Campaigns are strategic at this moment, but we are getting real close to the shift to tactical moves. And tactically is where McCain looks strong right now.
I was hoping I would wake up to better polling today.
There must be benzene in it which rots the brain.
Battleground has McCain up by one, best poll for McCain in five days.
Lighten up buckeroo. The debates are ahead. Polls are meaningless at this point.
But not the REAL magic word: Prayer?
Its the only sure tool we have; use it!
WI has a Demn Gov but this is the make-up of the state legislature [House and Senate:] 51 Reps/47 Dems/1 (I); 17 Dems/15 Reps/1 Vacancy. MN may have a Rep Governor but the state legislature is as follows: 85 Dems/48 Reps/1(I); 44 Dems/21 Reps/2 Vacancies.
The Congressional delegations are as follows: MN: House 5 Dems and 3 Reps. Senate: 1 Rep and 1 Dem, but Klobuchar was elected in 2006 (getting 58& of the vote) and Coleman in 2002. WI has 5 Dems and 3 Reps and two Dem Senators.
I don't know on what basis you make the assertion that WI has become more Dem since 2004, but if I had limited resources to invest and had to choose one between MN and WI, I would choose WI. It is more in play than MN, which has not gone Rep since 1960.
We are going to have to disagree on this point.
what is the urban vs suburban vs rural breakdown of minisota?
how active is obama’s acorn operation there?
Is there any fraud registration challenges?
Isn't that the truth? Rasmussen only seems reliable because he changes his polls the last week before the election to reflect what is happening. For anyone to pay attention to these polls and take them apart is wasting time.
Count all polls as worthless and watch what a campaign is doing with their people. When a candidate pulls ads where he has been heavily advertising or people out, their internals show the state is out of reach. If they send in a lot of people to a state that they thought they had in the bag internals are showing either a tight race or they are behind.
My guess on Obama is that FL is pretty much out of reach so far; PA, WI, and MN are either very close or McCain is out ahead because he is sending his wife into PA to meet with military spouses like that will do anything. He is also concentrating on MN and WI. He has real trouble with WI if Green Bay is going to tip the election. Then we had the polls touting Obama was close in ND but they pulled out everything in the state to send to other states. He is spending money and resources where he thought he didn't have to because those states were his.
Internal polls are always more reliable. Pres Bush being in trouble in FL was picked up internally in 2000 way before the pollsters picked it up and why so many trips started being made to FL. Bottom line watch where staff is being sent and the ad buys to see where a state stands. My guess is that Obama is in trouble in a lot of blue states right now the way he is acting and the amount of people they are sending into the state. If NC was really in play for Obama, you would see a lot more activity out of McCain into the State.
My two cents!
NC is fairly close but not close enough to tip to Obama.
Is there a central source of where the candidates AND STAFFERS are going?
It would be nice if we had a “dollar map”.
That would pretty much trump the general national polling bs.
We can disagree on our opinions, but the facts speak for themselves. MN is much more of a Dem state than WI. I think Norm Coleman is in deep trouble and will have a tough time holding on to his seat, despite being a Rep moderate with a lifetime ACU rating of 73 and a 2007 rating of 64. Klobuchar has a rating of 4. Say hello to Sen. Franken.
Nov 4th will tell all. Franken might be able to persuade Michaels to give him a job as a writer on SNL again, but he has burned a lot of bridges there as well.
Remember the wellstone rally?
times change
Mondale LOST minisota when he was DBM annointed as invincible and unstoppable.
You are dead on, PhiKapMom!
McCain has people that do polling for him, and those people HAVE to be accurate. So their actions mirror exactly where things are.
All of these other polling outfits can be wrong, and no one will care after election day, because they will be right back next time doing the same stuff!
No polling outfit from 2004 went out of business no matter how inaccurate they were.
If it's not, we have to ridicule the replacement into the ground for being a groveling coward too frightened to face Sarahcuda--especially since this big rumor has been so widespread WAY before the VP debate.
We will have to make it obvious Joe stayed in just long enough to protect the frightened, inadequate little boob replacement...
I don’t think there is a central source — most of what I have seen comes from articles this time. Would think there would be people keeping track because as you say this would be much more accurate then polling.
A lot of what I have seen also comes from longtime Freepers and what they are seeing in their state. You can tell when ads start dwindling or when candidates stop making trips into their state.
One of the reasons it would be easier to track Obama is that he hired so many more people then McCain and opened up offices and staffed them where he had no chance like two here in Oklahoma. I almost fell off my chair laughing when he opened two offices here and now down 41 points. From what I hear he pulled all staffers out of the state and the Dems locally are funding the offices. Kerry wasn’t that dumb to come into Oklahoma after the primary.
In 2000 if anyone had kept tracked they would have seen Pres Bush the last three weeks concentrating along the I-4 corridor of FL especially Hillsborough County (Tampa). If I had been Gore’s consultant, I would have sent him to FL to camp out after what I saw Bush doing. I am just very glad they didn’t. People that had been traveling with his campaign were sent to FL.
CA was cancelled by the McCain campaign for Gov Palin to do fundraisers because of her visit to the UN. If they had not rescheduled, I would put a fork in CA but with her going back out in early October, we may be seeing a trend to McCain in the The Golden State. The Hollywood crowd is acting hysterical right now especially against Palin which speaks volumes about her addition to the ticket which looks to have changed the total dynamics of the campaign.
Know that wasn’t much help but I am going to start looking around to see what I can find. These polls are pretty much worthless. Even the Dems are taken points away from Obama because they do not believe what they are saying because they believe people being polled are lying.
Exactly! Learned in 2000 when I knew what the internals were doing to stop paying attention to these polling outfits. Been yelling ever since polls are generally worthless from national polling outfits.
We have a polling group in OK that works for a local TV station in OKC — his are pretty close because he understands in OK that to weight polling by party doesn’t work as those OK conservative Dems have voted GOP for President since 1968. What to watch here is the margin in his polls. If OK has a huge margin (41 right now), it bodes well for the GOP elsewhere as it shows we are also getting moderate Dem votes.
I bet if we kept track of what campaigns are doing, we could do a much better prediction of what is going to happen. :)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.