Transcript: News teleconference today with McCain's Advisers

McCain Campaign Advisers News Teleconference Speakers: Bill Mcinturff, Lead Pollster, McCain-Palin 2008 Mike Duhaime, McCain Campaign Political Director Christian Ferry, McCain Deputy Campaign Manager Rick Davis, McCain Campaign Manager Brian Rogers, McCain Campaign Spokesman Rich Beeson, RNC Political Director

[*] ROGERS: Hey, everybody. Good morning. Thanks for joining us for a call this morning to talk about the state of the race with our campaign manager, Rick Davis; Lead Pollster Bill McInturff; Political Director Mike DuHaime; Deputy Campaign Christian Ferry; and the RNC’s political director, Rich Beeson.

With that, I’ll turn it over to Rick. Everybody’s going to talk a bit, then we’re going to take some questions.

And thank you, everybody, for taking the time to join us today. As the clock winds down on what has been the most exciting and historic presidential election in anybody’s recent memory, we’re pretty jazzed up about what we’re seeing in the movement in this election.

Obviously, we’ve had a lot of ups and downs in the course of this race, and the one that that has been the standard that the McCain campaign has created is that we fight back.

And we are witnessing, I believe, probably one of the greatest comebacks that you’ve seen since John McCain won the primary. And John McCain out there fighting every inch of the way in this election, his crowds have grown, they are more enthusiastic than anything we’ve ever seen.

Governor Palin’s crowds are huge. In fact, she was in a location last night, the same general vicinity of -- of Senator Biden. He had about 800 people at his event; she had 20,000.

So all the talk that we see on television and in newspapers about what a drag Governor Palin is on our ticket can’t be further from the truth. She’s electrifying crowds all across the battleground states, and we really appreciate the hard work she’s putting in.

Obviously, we’re in a sprint to the finish. We are going to talk a little bit today about what we see in the final 72 hours of the campaign, a little bit about where we see the air game and the ground game. And -- and a little bit more on where we see the race as we go on.

I would say the one thing that is clear is that we’ve established some momentum. We’re increased our gains in virtually every one of the battleground states throughout the course of the weeks.

We’ve had probably the best 10 days of polling since the convention. We think we’ve shaken off the effects of the financial collapse that suppressed our numbers prior to the last debate, and we believe we are on a run right now that, from what we can tell, will be unabated through the course of the election.

We think that this has helped us in all the battleground states, plus a number of other states that people haven’t been paying a lot of attention to. We see Barack Obama now going to states that only a week ago people claimed were out of reach for us.

Iowa’s a good example. Public polling had it at 12 points. Our own data now has us dead even in the state of Iowa. And we understand Barack Obama probably has very similar polling. He’s now on his way back to Iowa as one of his last campaign stops.

We think that these states that make up a potential 270 coalition for us are all actively in play and that you will (inaudible) schedule over the course of the next 72 hours a sprint to try and touch base in key markets within those states to keep them on the track to victory.

We believe that with the combination of our base states and a number of others that we’ve been able to put in play over the course of this week, that we can achieve 270 and are going to be closing into our resources to do that.

What we have today is -- you’ve heard who’s on the phone. What I’d like to now do is turn over for a couple minutes the microphone to Bill McInturff, our lead political strategist and pollster, who can give you a sense of where he believes the state of the race is.

I know that many of you have talked to him during the course of this campaign. You know how credible he is on being able to establish where these trends are coming from. We heard earlier this week from Bill on where he believed the state of the race is, and we’d love to have a chance to have him update that for a couple minutes right now.

Here’s what I think is happening. There’s kind of a structure to American politics, and that structure is, who is -- what’s the composition of the electorate and what is party identification.

So we went back, and if you look at every exit poll from 1976 forward, in 1976 and 1980, Republicans were 15 points down on party I.D.

Now, in the modern era, ‘84 on, every cycle, the worst possible cycle, 1992, among people who went to vote, they were by 5 points Democrat.

So what we’re seeing in the last week or 10 days is intensity increasing with, you know, some of the core Republican coalition, so that they are finally kicking in and going up. And as that happens, we’re seeing it closing in party identification. And I believe that party I.D. on Election Day, among exit -- you know, on the exit polls -- and that, of course, incorporates early voters -- is going to be in that kind of historic norm of minus three to minus five.

MCINTURFF: And when that happens, John McCain is -- and our stuff -- always run ahead of party ID. And so this kind of rising intensity with our coalition, the consolidating of party identification is helping create a very, very close result.

Now, as you all look at multiple polls, we had a strange day yesterday, it’s a CBS big Obama lead, Fox race closing. Well, yes, CBS has got minus eight on party ID, Fox has got 2 points. Or my friend Andy Coette (ph) at Pew he’s got a 15 point party identification spread. Well, that -- yes, that was 1976 after Watergate. So as you look at polls, the most important thing to look at is party, and the most important thing to look at is 20 to 30 years of history in this country about that composition of the electorate.

I think the second thing that’s happening, Rick, is that Jimmy Carter got 50.1, Bill Clinton got 49 twice; it is very hard in what is a center-right country for a Democrat to get above that number. And what we’re seeing in Missouri, in Pennsylvania and in other states is that the Barack Obama number is dropping and John McCain is gradually coming up. And I think he’s dropping because of that kind of structural barrier, in terms of the historic vote in this country once you start getting down to -- to voters.

And then third is, there’s no question this turn out’s going to be huge. There’s no question I think -- of course there’s going to be increased African-American turn-out, there’s gong to be turn-out with younger voters. But as well, we’re seeing level of interest we’ve never, never reported before. We’ve been doing this intra-scale one to 10 and the percent (inaudible), they are approaching 80 percent. That’s literally 30 points higher than the 2000 election. And I am -- so I think we’re heading toward 130 to a 135 million people. It’s good to remember that only, quote, “Only 104” people voted in 200. So we’re talking -- I believe, about literally 25 million voters. And those 25 million voters are diverse, and they’re diverse in a way that keeps the overall composition of the electorate, by demographic group, I think, pretty similar.

But -- but, as I said, they make this race difficult to predict. But overall, for the reasons I mentioned, I think very, very close, compared to, how I think, a lot of how some other -- you know, again, very well respected pollsters -- but I don’t see how you have a poll showing party ID at minus 8, 12, and 15. That’s just not America -- that’s not America anywhere in the last generation and a half.

DAVIS: I think that is perfect. I appreciate the time and Bill’s going to have to depart the call, but we’ll try the best we can to fill in the blanks on any questions that come up dealing directly with this. And I know that you always hold yourself open and available to reporters, so if they want to call you later, I’m sure they can.

Thank you Bill, and let me turn now to a quick discussion of the ground game. We have with us, Rich Beeson, local director of the RNC and Mike DuHaime, our political chief and deputy. Let me just say, parenthetically, that there are a lot of reports these days about the various choices that we make in a campaign for emphasis. Whether we emphasize media spending or ground game.

We have had the benefit of an enormously positive cooperation between the RNC and the McCain campaigning throughout the course of the general election period and the end of our primary period. In fact, this has been a historic cooperation in that the amount of resource that we’ve able to generate and use for all the various mechanisms of this campaign have exceeded anything in any other campaign ever. Specially, one thing I’d like to make a point of, is that in the course of the general election period, since the end of our convention until today, the combined amount of spending between the RNC and the McCain campaigning, not counting any state dollars whatsoever, is $325 million. Many people do a lot of work to try to figure out the math, you know, how much Barack Obama raises every hour on the hour.

DAVIS: But I would like to say that, from my perspective, this is the most amount of money ever spent in a two-month period in Republican Party history. And it has been significantly distributed amongst the important party lines.

I would say -- and we’ll recap this later on TV -- that the splits that we’ve been able to accomplish, where we have used our resources, both in cooperation with the RNC and hybrid advertising and then our own, have been significant. But it is also significant that the RNC has spent over $50 million on independent expenditure advertising that has had a significant impact on this election.

So I think when you are looking at all the various amounts of money spent in this campaign, you’ll be surprised to learn that -- that we have been very competitive in some of our spending (inaudible) with the -- with the Obama campaign, and ahead of any other presidential campaign in our party’s history.

That being said, too, that the devotion of resources to the field game has been incredibly substantial, and has grown every week that we’ve been able to exceed our fund-raising goals at the RNC.

That being said, what I’d like to now do is turn the mike over to Mike DuHaime, let him get us started, and maybe have Rick say a few things.

I do want to just touch on one thing Rick mentioned -- the RNC and victory program has been incredible. And the cooperation has been incredible between folks both here at the RNC’s headquarters with us and out in the field with various state parties and victory programs, really has been tremendous. Rich Beeson has done a tremendous job.

I just want to touch on a couple of things. One is that we, I believe, have a data and technology edge that has been very helpful to us in the last 10 days. It’s been helpful to us throughout the year, but I think it is manifesting itself as we get closer to Election Day.

Our technology, our micro-targeting, which is something that’s been built on -- years and years of work in terms of micro-targeting I think has helped give us an edge in terms of identifying folks who would be McCain supporters.

Our voice-over-Internet phone technology that you see out in the field has allowed us to collect data in a way that no campaign has ever done before. We literally get millions of pieces of data back, and can, on a daily basis, analyze movements within the -- within the electorate, much more so than any -- any poll could do. And it allows us to read and react to those movements in a very quick way, using the micro-targeting and using that mass amount of data that comes back into our hands every night.

So the voice-over-Internet phones and the scan bubble sheets that you see out in all the -- in field offices, for anybody who’s actually gone out and done that, has provided us with incredible resource in terms of information and data.

And also just the little things, like the voice mails that we can leave now, you actually can get recorded voice mail from our volunteers. You can actually -- some of our GOTV folks will hear Governor Palin’s voice when they’re getting reached by voice mail.

This is a small enhancement of technology that allows for more personalized messaging and also allows us to make more phone calls.

Just to give some raw numbers to what we’ve been doing recently, in this past week, past seven days, we’ve made over 5.3 million targeted phone calls and door knocks. These are the people who we believe are people who are either going to vote for McCain and need the -- need the push to get out, or people who are persuadable voters that we think are still sitting on the fence, that we need to personally touch.

We did 1.3 million phone calls and door knocks yesterday alone. That is an incredible day for us.

To put these numbers into perspective, 2004 was certainly a gold standard for turnout, probably for either party. And in the same week in 2004, we did 1.9 million phone calls and door knocks. We did over 5.3 million during the same week this year. And did almost that, obviously, in one day.

Even this week, we did -- we did twice as many phone calls using our online tools than we did in all 2004.

I think what this just shows is that we have been able to really expand year after year in building our technology and using that to increase and enhance our grassroots program.

We’ve done over 24 million targeted contacts to date. These, again, are the very targeted voters. This is not canvassing every single door or anything like that. These are very targeted -- very targeted votes.

I project forward that we will probably do in the neighborhood of 17 million or more targeted contacts over the final days of the campaign, just by volunteers. We’re using thousands of deployed volunteers into target states, which is part of our 72-hour program.

Also, one of the things that we’ve -- Senator McCain’s strength and support in nontarget states and I think the passion that our volunteers in nontarget states often show, where we have phone banks up in nontarget states, calling into target states, that adds to our capacity and certainly make sure that our volunteers in all 50 states can be helpful.

DUHAIME: Just a few examples, we have phone banks in New Jersey calling into Pennsylvania, phone banks in Utah calling into Colorado and New Mexico, phone banks in Massachusetts and Rhode Island calling into New Hampshire, scores of phone banks in California calling into Nevada. We also have deployed volunteers from Oklahoma and Texas going to Colorado. Those are just a few examples. We have 1.1 million -- excuse me, 1.1 million active volunteers at this point, that we predict will be helping us out over the final weekend, and we are -- over the last few weeks have been in the process of dropping 200 million of targeted direct mail to help boost our turn-out. I think those are some things.

I just want to give a few other anecdotes in terms of our field operation. Phone bankers in Virginia, now, who like to work and work beyond the hours of calling in the Eastern Time zone -- after they’re done calling in Virginia, call out to western states. Call volunteers in western states. Our web technology is better than anything we’ve had, for example, to go on our web site, you type in your address, it’ll help you find your polling location, find your early vote location.

It’s my understanding that that same feature on the Obama web site has been down for three days -- you know, I’m not sure if that’s correct, but that’s what I’ve been told. And also, Senator McCain last week did a massive conference call with -- volunteers with our hundreds of victory centers around the country, encouraging them -- for our last -- for our work last Saturday. Governor Palin will be doing a similar one this week that really helps energize our folks. And also, we’ve been using tele-town-halls to make that Senator McCain and Governor Palin can speak to as many folks as possible in target states.

And with that, I just want to -- that’s kind of the basic outline, I want to turn over to Rich Beeson to (inaudible) any other (inaudible).

BEESON: Thanks, Mike. I just want to -- from a historical perspective, just want to reiterate was Rick was saying about the integration. I was a regional political director in the 2000 campaign and again in 2004, so -- a little experience on margin two operations. It is exactly right when he talks about how well two operations have merged together. It’s been a -- an almost seamless operation, and has worked very well.

Just to duck tail a little bit what Mike said about when we look over the last 15 weeks of this campaign and compare it to 2004 with the 64 percent increase in voter contacts, direct voter contacts, compared to our 2004 campaign -- which Mike says is sort of the gold- standard -- but a 64 percent increase over the last 15 weeks. When you look at the phone calls and door knocks that were made yesterday, it was about 35,000 hours of -- of volunteer phone calls alone yesterday, and another 15 to 16,000 hours out on the door in one day of -- of volunteer contact.

We’ve seen a 75 percent increase in our numbers just over the month of October. In each targeted states, they have increase their -- their output by 75 percent from the first week of October to the last week of October. That’s in every single state as -- as they are moving toward Election Day.

We -- we’ve had over the course of this year, 790 percent increase in candidate IDs for our candidate for president. Just in our ability, the technology that we have to capture data and get it into the system, nearly an 800 percent increase in -- in ID data.

So again, as we move into this final weekend, this operation is working all eight cylinders. It’s working in every single target state, it’s doing what it was designed to do, and -- and it is working very well. So with that, I think we’re going to Christian to talk about absentee and early.

FERRY: Great, thank you Rick. I wanted to play off of a comment that Bill McCshire (ph) made, that interest in this election -- that at an all time high. That is not surprising to any of us who are watching this. As interest is up, as enthusiasm is up, we’re also going to expect a huge turn-out on Election Day. But we’re also seeing, you know, record turn-outs in both absentee ballot requests, absentee ballot returns and early vote returns. While you see -- you know, the overall turn-out is way up in all three of these various methods of voting, what you’re not seeing is a different make-up, a composition of a pie when it comes to demographics or party ID. It is not significantly different when you break it down than what you saw in 2000 and what you saw in 2004.

A couple of examples to share. If you look at Florida -- and in Florida, it’s similar to other states where Democrats normally have an advantage following the early vote period, Republicans have an advantage following absentee ballot voting. If you take all the absentee requests, returns and early votes that are cast, John McCain -- and -- and the Republicans have an advantage in -- in the combined total of early votes, absentee ballots returned and absentee ballot requests.

In Nevada, you are not seeing anything different than you’ve seen in previous years when you look at the make up of the early vote when it comes to kind of, demographic make up. In 2004, first time in new registrant Democrat voters, made up 13 percent of all the early votes cast. Thus far in 2008, it’s about 12.6 percent of all the early votes cast. Again, very similar trends to what we’ve seen in -- in previous elections.

In Pennsylvania, if you look at absentee ballot returns, the GOP is leading by about 56 percent to 44 percent in terms of returns. Younger Democrat voters in 2004 made up 22.9 percent of the absentee votes. Thus far in 2008, it’s 14 percent of the -- 14.6 percent of the early -- absentee vote.

In 2004, first time in new registrant voters were about 34 percent of the Democrat absentee vote, in 2008, it’s 27 percent of the absentee. And first time and new registrant voters in the Republican vote in 2004 was about 31.9 percent.

So across the board, in all these states, if you look at absentee ballot voting, you look at early vote -- early voting, the percentages are very consistent across the board with what we’ve seen before.

You are seeing higher numbers of people taking advantage of these opportunities to vote. That’s reflective of the early interest and the pent-up enthusiasm that exists on the ground.

But when you break it down and look at the numbers, it is not significantly different than what you’ve seen in previous election cycles.

DUHAIME: This is Mike DuHaime. I have just one final comment. I’d also caution, when you look at early vote and absentee totals and you look purely at Democrat versus Republicans, as I imagine our opponents would have you look, one of the things that I think folks should remember is that we are used to operating in an environment where we need to pick up a significant number of Democrat voters to win elections. John McCain is the perfect candidate on our side of the aisle to pick up independent voters and cross-over Democrats. We are used to this.

And Christian mentioned Florida. One of the things that I think folks should understand is that we are actively turning out conservative Democrats and independents that we believe are voting for John McCain and will vote ultimately for the rest of the ticket. This has been something we have done successfully year after year.

If you look at a state like Florida, that has hundreds of thousands more Democrats than Republicans, Republicans don’t win either for president, for governor or anything else without the ability to pick up cross-over votes. And this is something that our campaign has been actively doing. And Senator McCain is the perfect candidate to do that. That is true in other states as well.

If you look at many of these states, they are states where if you just look at Democrats and Republican registration, there is a clear advantage for Democrats. So just understand that below that surface, there is a lot of work that is done to target the right types of independents and the right type of Democrats to vote.

I also know that a word that was used on our opponent’s conference call earlier today, it was talking about the number of sporadic voters that are voting that are Democrats. Just remember, there’s a difference between sporadic voters and new voters. Sporadic voters are people who voted in 2004, at least a chunk of sporadic voters who voted in 2004. Low propensity voters are people who voted in 2004.

When you’re changing the composition of the electorate, it is about new voters, not necessarily just about sporadic voters.

Let me close out most of this conversation about the one other remaining voter contact methodology that obviously gets at lot of attention -- that’s TV.

Obviously, this week has been a pretty brisk week on the TV air wars. We saw a development that hasn’t been seen in a long time, Barack Obama ’s campaign ran a 30-minute television advertisement.

From what we can tell from the data that we’ve seen, it was mostly watched -- obviously significantly, but by Barack Obama supporters. When -- when we’ve seen data and asked whether or not somebody was more or less likely to support Barack Obama after watching that 30-minute program, the less likelys were slightly ahead of the likelys.

So from our perspective, it was an interesting use of I guess probably an excess of $5 million in campaign cash. To put it into perspective, you could have run about a week’s worth of 30-second ads in almost all the targeted states, and the Obama campaign chose to do it all in one night.

We don’t see any evidence that that was any kind of a game- changer or did anything but -- but communicate with their base.

That being said, I do think it’s important to note, after all the press that we’ve seen that relates to spending in this area, that over the course of the last basic 10 days, from the 29th, 28th, or, actually for us the 27th until Election Day, we’re in the process now and on track, as of today, from the publicly available data, to outspend Barack Obama by about $10 million during that period of time through Election Day.

That includes his purchases of the 30-minute advertising and all other 30- and 1:20-second ads for both campaigns combined, in all states.

My understanding is they’ve announced this morning that they were going to add to their buy in Arizona, North Dakota and Georgia. We -- we encourage them to please pick other states that we intend to win to spend their final campaign cash, and spread it out as much as they can.

I’m not sure how much more that will add to their buy. Those are not very expensive states. And I would anticipate that in the last 10 days of this campaign, McCain will outspend Barack Obama on television.

DAVIS: Obviously, we believe and have for some time that it’s more important to have the velocity on T.V. in the last week of the election. Everything that we learned in the primaries indicated to us that the electorate that’s watching this election and has been for 20 months are late-breakers.

There’s absolutely nothing in the data indicate to us that that’s not exactly the case. The fact that we have enough resources to be able to punch our message through in the final days of this campaign indicates to us a great potential to be able to compete in the air against Obama in a way that we have not been able to do since this campaign started.

From our perspective, we released today our closing ad, John McCain talking on -- on air about his history with service to the country, serving causes greater than self-interest, and what he intends to do with his economic policies for America. We think this is a good way to close this campaign.

We believe we’ve been able to win the economic argument for the last 10 days. You’ll see, too, a very good contrast ad that we have currently playing, which is -- which is directly related to the contrasts on economics and spending. Barack Obama has been consistent on his desire to increase spending, while John McCain is looking to decrease it.

Finally, one other ad of note is that we continue to play what we affectionately refer to as the “Joe the Biden” ad, where he specifically talks about trouble that may occur when Barack Obama -- or if Barack Obama becomes elected president. We believe that having that in the closing arguments, we could imagine no other better argument for John McCain ’s credentials on security and able to serve as commander in chief on day one than that ad.

So that pretty much wraps up our -- our call for today. Happy to open it up for Q&A while we still have time. Sorry for going so long. I’m sure the questions you have are more interesting than the message that we’ve just given you, but I want to make sure you understand that we are ready, willing and able to win this election and step off on Wednesday as the president-elect and begin to prepare to change this country in a way that will -- will improve the life for everyone here.

So thanks, everybody, for sticking with us this long. And happy to open it up for questions.

QUESTION: Hey, Rick. Can you tell us a little bit about where Senator McCain is going to be going and if he’s going to spend the last 24 hours campaigning straight?

DAVIS: Yes. He obviously is -- is -- is embarked upon a tour right now through Ohio. He’s hooking up this afternoon with Arnold Schwarzenegger , who’s an old Ohioan, and actually opened up his first body-building operation in that state, sort of an icon of -- of Ohio.

It’s actually a fun day for us. We’ve dubbed that last event “Judgment Day.” We think that it’s a good distinction between John McCain and Barack Obama on judgment as it relates to the economy and national security.

We do plan to campaign pretty actively throughout the last 24 hours of the campaign. We will -- we will hit a little bit of a nostalgia tour in New Hampshire Sunday night, where John will -- will have a final New Hampshire event.

Many of you who have been around for a long time will -- will recognize some of the sights and sounds of where our campaign has been rescued and resurrected many times before, you know, on the backs of the New Hampshirites. And we thought it was appealing to us to try and get him back up there one more time.

And then on Monday, you know, he’ll -- he’ll hit seven different cities in seven different states before winding up in Phoenix, Arizona, for Election Day.

So we’re still fiddling around with a few of those final locations, but I’m sure we’ll have that all out in -- publicly in just a little while.

QUESTION: Can you go into a little more detail about the ad spending now and (inaudible) exactly how much you’re (inaudible) you[‘re going to spend it and why you have this cash that you can outspend Barack Obama at the end here? Have you been just kind of saving it?

DAVIS: Well, sure. I mean, you know, we -- Barack Obama clearly made a decision that on the heels of the financial collapse that occurred three or four weeks ago that he was going to heavy up on his ad buy. He put $20 million more in each week for two weeks than he had historically been doing.

He has a burn rate that usually is about $20 million a week. And other than adjustments for things like these 30 minute ads, he had boosted that up to almost $40 million a week for those two weeks.

Since then, he’s been back down to his average ad spending levels that we’ve seen, you know, consistently week in and week out.

DAVIS: One, early parts of the general election period, we combined with RNC resources to -- spend hybrid ad money. We made a decision a couple weeks ago, to split the -- ad spending, and to be able to be a little more focused in our messaging here at the McCain campaign, and have devoted our resources specifically to solo ads on McCain.

That freed up money at the RNC that -- from looking at the ad charts, they have made a, I think, wise decision, to -- pound a lot of money into the -- independent expenditure that they have, which is now exceeding, probably, close to $20 million dollars for one last week of spending.

As I mentioned earlier, they will have spent almost $54 million I think, in -- ad spending through that ID. You combine that with the spending that we have for this week, and you have us succeeding the Obama combined Obama and Democratic National Committee ad spending by over $10 million. So that’s how we come to that conclusion.

QUESTION: Hey guys, you mentioned the early voting versus absentee numbers -- I’m wondering, looking over at the last few days, if you can tell the impact of Governor Crist order to extend the early voting hours, if that’s had an impact on -- on those numbers, and if that’s going to hurt you guys in the last few days here of early voting.

(UNKNOWN): We have not. We -- I do not have data in front of me to necessarily measure the impact. I think it takes effect, in many ways, this weekend, but we think those more people that can vote, and the ability to allow people to vote is a great thing, so our extending the hours is certainly a good thing, as it allows more people to vote. But we do not -- I do not have any data that necessarily can give you the measure on the impact.

(UNKNOWN): I would think, similar to what Christian had reported earlier, you know, we’re -- we are very satisfied with the performance we’re seeing in early voting. And we -- we are staying as competitive as any other winning presidential race that we’ve had in the last decade to -- in the the early voting process and in the absentee ballot process. So anything that continues that trend is fine with us.

QUESTION: Hi, it’s Mary Beth Snyder (ph). Senator McCain is neck and neck in Indiana, and it’s a state that hasn’t gone for a Republican since -- for a Democrat since 1964. What are you guys doing in this state, because, frankly, while we’ve seen Senator Palin, we haven’t seen Senator McCain?

(UNKNOWN): Well, I have a sneaking suspicion you’ll probably see him before the election is over. And -- but I would say to, that we love the results of the campaign that we have going on there. In fact, today, there’s a new Rasmussen poll out showing us 3 points up, 49-46 in the state. We don’t see much public data out of Indiana, so it’s a good poll for us to see banging around there.

You know we -- we had the benefit of having a terrific governor, Mitch Daniels , towing a lot of our efforts in Indiana. Look, I mean, we -- we really value Indiana, we know that the Obama campaign has made a big effort there to try to turn the race into a Democrat win there, and we think with the amount of resources we had available for Indiana, it seems to be tracking the right way. And really (inaudible) we’ll close strong there and be able to pick up a win there.

QUESTION: Nostalgia aside, given the polling up here, do you still feel -- obviously you still feel that the state is in play, because I don’t think you’d be here just -- just for the nostalgia thing -- given -- but given the polling, what -- what are you saying that isn’t showing up, and, you know, why are our four electoral votes still -- still important given the map?

(UNKNOWN): Well, I don’t think that there’s any state that shows more disparity in the polling -- public polling numbers than -- than New Hampshire has. I mean, it’s been all over the map. I think your poll is probably the furthest outlier on how far we’re out, and there are many others that show it much more in reach.

Look, I mean, John McCain has always finished incredibly strong in New Hampshire. We see the Senate race there closing and becoming more competitive for Senator Sununu. We think -- we think New Hampshire has always been a good battleground for us. And you’re right. I mean, we wouldn’t go there just for nostalgia purposes. We’re going there to win.

We -- we’ve been all over the map. Honestly, New Hampshire as you know, is always a hard state to pull, and so we’re, you know, we’re pretty committed to finishing the campaigning in New Hampshire. We think our field organization there is incredibly strong. You know there is a -- there is a great tug to McCain.

And look, at the end of the day, one of the things that probably the most important close in this race is that -- is that New Hampshire’s a low tax state. New Hampshire likes to vote for people who want to cut their taxes.

There is no bigger disparity right now than the growing difference between how McCain is perceived on taxes and Obama. Obama has been able to in the past blur that distinction, run up some numbers in states like New Hampshire.

But, frankly, you know, since Joe the plumber turned on to the scene, since we have seen, time and time again, about, you know, the Obama philosophy of sharing the wealth and redistribution, and more and more evidence comes out on a daily basis that that’s really the core philosophy, and people are starting to understand that this promise for, you know, cutting taxes for 90 percent of the people is just hogwash, that has had a big impact in the state of New Hampshire.

And I think that as we push to a close there on cutting taxes and cutting spending, there’s no better issue than those two things to close the race on in New Hampshire.

As usual, we expect a barnburner, but we expect to win there. And we’re excited about it.

And as it relates to the -- to the Electoral College, look, we’re banking on a very close race. I mean, we think this is going to be a tight Electoral College year. We think this is going to be a tight popular vote year.

There’s no indications otherwise today. I mean if you look back, two weeks from now, you see a different race, guess what? Polling isn’t accumulative. It’s whatever it is today. And we see a very, very tight race today. And so, it really doesn’t matter where it was 10 days ago.

And so, we do anticipate a close election. And in a close election, those electoral votes in New Hampshire mean a lot to us. So we’re going to go there and try and fight for them.

Listen, I want to thank everybody for joining us. I apologize for the call going so long. But it’s an exciting period of time for us. We see a lot of positive activity on the ground. We had a -- we had a slogan through the primaries, “believe your eyes.” We didn’t have a single poll that showed us up until we won in a lot of those places that we won in the primaries.

And we anticipate that, you know, we can accomplish the same thing in the general election. No indications otherwise.

So, thanks, everybody. I look forward to seeing you all on the road. And if you have any questions, please feel free to follow up with our crack communications staff.

This has been a very good week for McCain. Except for Florida, all the battleground states polls have tightened in John's favor. The National polls and EC projections always lag the State polls. Florida tightened in John's favor last week - down to NObama +1.8 - but has slipped back towards NObama this week. The current Florida NObama +3.5 is down from the recent +4.2 peak. We are within the polls average margin of error, which is the important factor to remember. Floridians have already cast 3.4 million early and absentee votes. No question we will set a new total votes record for this Presidential election. - FlA

TAB

Wow.

Is this going to lead the news tonight?

Florida related teleconference McCain advisors comments:

Christian Ferry, McCain Deputy Campaign Manager: A couple of examples to share. If you look at Florida — and in Florida, it’s similar to other states where Democrats normally have an advantage following the early vote period, Republicans have an advantage following absentee ballot voting. If you take all the absentee requests, returns and early votes that are cast, John McCain — and — and the Republicans have an advantage in — in the combined total of early votes, absentee ballots returned and absentee ballot requests.

Mike Duhaime, McCain Campaign Political Director: And Christian mentioned Florida. One of the things that I think folks should understand is that we are actively turning out conservative Democrats and independents that we believe are voting for John McCain and will vote ultimately for the rest of the ticket. This has been something we have done successfully year after year. If you look at a state like Florida, that has hundreds of thousands more Democrats than Republicans, Republicans don’t win either for president, for governor or anything else without the ability to pick up cross-over votes. And this is something that our campaign has been actively doing. And Senator McCain is the perfect candidate to do that. That is true in other states as well.

TAB

Hope so, here’s the lastest snipped article on this subject in our local MSM newspaper - which endorsed NObama;

10.31.08 Miami Herald: After months of being outgunned by Democrats on the air, the Republican Party will keep pace in the homestretch in Florida with a multimillion-dollar television blitz that compares electing Barack Obama to getting on a plane with an amateur pilot. More than $2 million will be spent in South Florida alone to deflate a potential groundswell for Obama, who drew standing-room-only crowds in heavily Republican Sarasota and in Orlando and Sunrise over the past two days. One anti-Obama spot shows innocuous images of a plane taking off, children on a swing set and a doctor performing surgery and asks: ``Would you get on a plane with a pilot who has never flown? Would you trust your child with someone who has never cared for children? Would you go under with a surgeon who has never operated?’’ The ad ends by calling Obama ``untested.’’ The debate in the final days boils down to experience vs. — as the Democrats put it — the last eight years.

With his presidential bid on the line, McCain has been struggling to catch up to Obama on television. The Republican Party’s national fundraising arm has sought to close the gap, purchasing $2 million to $2.5 million in ads covering Miami-Dade and Broward counties. The hard-hitting ads in Miami, Tampa and Orlando contrast with a new positive spot featuring Gov. Charlie Crist. The governor calls McCain an ‘’American hero’’ and doesn’t mention Obama.

TAB

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