Oct 22 2008
Will The Messiah Falter In Pennsylvania?
Something may be happening in Pennsylvania which could determine the outcome of our pending election:
Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell has sent two separate memos to the Obama campaign in the past five days requesting that the Democratic Presidential candidate—as well as Hillary and Bill Clinton—return to campaign in Pennsylvania, Rendell told CNN’s Gloria Borger.
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“I don’t want to be selfish,†Rendell said. “But I’m still a little nervous, so I have asked Obama to come back. We understand he’s got demands from 20 different states, but we’d like to see him here.â€
Pennsylvania would be a huge win for McCain-Palin and more than offset a loss in Vriginia and New Hampshire. I have been watching the highly skewed Morning Call daily tracking poll (which samples something like +13% democrats in a state Kerry only took by +2.5%) and I noticed it shows a tightening race here at the stretch. On 10/16 Obama had a +16% lead, that is now down to +10%. I can see why Rendell is concerned.
This poll does NO weighting on historic turnout model or voting patterns. And the Obama lead follows the party ID percentage perfectly (the last poll had +11% Dems). If conservative dems defect (go PUMAs) then PA could slip away from Obama like it did when he faced Hillary there. Is there still hope left? Very much so, but it will require a final push on voting day. No one can stay home on this election.
Update: And there are other indicators out there as well:
Alternate Title #1: Why the Democrats are still very nervous.
Alternate title #2: Why John McCain is touring PA today.
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State today’s margin (last week’s margin) movement
Interesting. And yet more (from the above link):
Steve Corbett, a radio talk show host in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, accidentally received a copy of an internal email sent by Grant Olin who heads the Wilkes-Barre headquarters of the Obama campaign. The email went to 627 Obama campaign volunteers in the Wilkes-Barre Scranton region, saying that Obama Headquarters reported an internal poll which shows that Obama is only 2 points up in Pennsylvania.
Sean Smith, who is heading Obama’s Pennsylvania campaign, was interviewed by Steve Corbett via phone at 5:35 today to discuss this. He said that Grant “went rogue”, and aknowledged that Grant was “reprimanded” for this.
Very interesting …
Update: Some news on early voting shows more dems voting early in many states – no word how many are PUMAs. Colorado shows early voting is equal across the parties, Florida showing strong GOP support. And more interesting news on PA from the NY Times. Pennsylvanians may become really motivated if it is their year to select the direction of the country.
crosspatch, just to clarify a few points…
The 5% rise last week can be directly attributed to the general world consensus on the need to cut interest rates, but particularly to Bernanke’s warming to the idea. If you track BO’s polls, any or all of them – it really doesn’t matter, and try to co-relate them to daily market behavior, there is none.
If moneyed investors, or even small-time investors, are really backing Obama’s economic policies, his success in the polls should show some corresponding impact on the markets.
As for California’s sudden rise in housing sales, if you follow the story, the surge is actually driving prices down even further. It’s a feeding frenzy blip of piranhas hoping to capitalize later on a government mortgage bailout package. Even though units are “moving”, the housing market is not improving. The fact that housing sales is up, while true, is actually misleading in describing the prospects of California’s housing market.
As for oil continuing to drop despite OPEC’s attempt to shore up the value by cutting production, there are a lot of factors but one whopping new anomaly to the market has to be Iraq’s new oil contracts plus the success of the surge which has re-opened Iraq’s financial activity with a vengeance. An added factor of the surge may be a noticeable decrease in the DoD’s gas consumption. But this is pure speculation on my part. I don’t know where to get the numbers to support the argument one way or the other.
An interesting corollary to the drop in oil prices is how it’s affecting the Eastern Bloc and their socialist allies. All the blustering in the run up to the crash by Putin sending ships to the Caribbean, Chavez giving away oil to Bolivia, and Iran’s nuclear muscle flexing has all been with the backing of months of incendiary oil prices. But with the collapse of oil prices, their sabers have grown (ahem) flaccid.
QUOTE: “Deutsche Bank estimated in a recent research note that Iran and Venezuela need an oil price of more than $95 a barrel to balance their budgets, and Russia requires a price of $75. That compares to a break-even figure of $55 for Saudi Arabia.”
‘Axis of Diesel’ forced to change its ways by plummeting oil price
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/natural_resources/article4965242.ece
Archtop,
My strategy exactly.
finally, How Palin Governed by Byron York is online today
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MjEyMzk3MWU4Yzk1NGQyMWYwZjk0OTcyNmEzYTM5N2E=
not that we can discuss Palin’s Pipeline instead of her new wardrobe…