This is the ninth poll of the critical battleground state of Ohio (link to US census demographic data) but the first to show a tight race once again after two which showed Obama leading by as many as seven points. Today’s poll from Rasmussen Reports gives Senator McCain a narrow one point lead over Senator Obama in the Buckeye State.
I don’t have the internals to yesterday’s Columbus Dispatch poll, so it is impossible to accurately gauge what may account for the variation. The trendline has been in Senator Obama’s favour but this poll contradicts at least the severity of the shift (though it does confirm that Obama has closed the gap from just two weeks ago) and points to a still fluid and dynamic race. Timing is another possibility. The Columbus Dispatch though released yesterday is from the tail end of the last week. The Rasmussen Reports poll is from this weekend. The national CBS News poll showed a tightening race once again with Obama leading McCain by just three points among likely voters. Still the most likely explanation is that the Columbus Dispatch is a bit of an outlier but again without knowing the internals of that poll, it is hard to tell.
Ohio’s still a horse race in the latest Fox News/Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of voters in the state.
For the second week in a row, John McCain leads Barack Obama by a single point, 48% to 47%. Libertarian candidate Bob Barr and independent candidate Ralph Nader each earn one percent (1%) of the vote. Two weeks ago McCain led by four points.
The US Presidential race in Colorado remains fluid and dynamic with polls showing considerable variation. Yesterday’s Denver Post/Mason Dixon poll showed the race in the Rocky Mountain State tied at 44% apiece with 9% undecided. Today’s Rasmussen Reports poll points to a six point margin for Senator Obama. The difference is the results is likely caused by the format of the questions used in each poll. The Mason Dixon poll gave an option to be undecided, the Rasmussen Reports poll did not. In the Rasmussen Reports poll, undecideds are not prompted with the option, they have to of their own accord chose to be undecided. Thus the number of undecided voters are fewer in the Rasmussen Poll. Including then this lean factor, the race in Colorado is 51% to 45% in favour of Obama.
The other difference between the two polls is the weighting of respondents. In the Mason Dixon poll, it was broken down roughly equally among Republicans, Democrats and unaffiliated voters. Rasmussen Reports uses a mix that is more in tune to actual breakdown of voters by party registration or lack thereof. Currently, that mix is approximately 39% Democratic, 32% Republican and 29% independent. These two differences in the structure of the polls account for the difference between their results.
Barack Obama is pulling away from John McCain in Colorado, according to the latest Fox News/Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in the state.
Obama leads McCain by six points, 51% to 45%. A week ago, Obama had a one-point lead, and a week before that McCain was up by two.
Eighty-two percent (82%) of Colorado voters are now certain who they will vote for, up four points from a week ago. Eighteen percent (18%) say they may still change their minds, including one-third of unaffiliated voters in the state.
For Obama the findings are good news since moving Colorado to the Democratic column is considered critical to his winning the White House. A classic swing state, Colorado went for George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004 and GOP nominee Bob Dole in 1996 after supporting Democrat Bill Clinton four years earlier.
Polls over the past two weeks have all pointed to Senator McCain’s lead in Florida (link to US Census demographic data) evaporating. Two weeks ago, McCain led by five points. Last week, it was a dead heat tied at 47% apiece. Today, Senator Obama leads by seven, 52% to 45%.
I’ll restate my current thesis, operative now for about a week, but we are on the cusp of an Obama landslide in the Electoral College and perhaps one in the popular vote. The race turned decisively beginning on September 15th with the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the rescue of AIG. These events set off a financial firestorm that played well to the Obama campaign meme that McCain was more of the same. The Obama campaign has run much stronger and more consistent ads hitting on the economic crisis and it has resonated with voters across the country and most especially in a number of battleground states where McCain leads have vanished and become solid Obama leads.
Barack Obama has pulled ahead to his biggest lead yet over John McCain in Florida. The latest Fox News/Rasmussen Reports survey of the state finds the Democrat ahead 52% to 45%.
Last week, the race was tied at 47%. Just one week prior, McCain had a five percentage point lead.
A Rasmussen Reports poll in Missouri (link is to US Census demographic data) shows the race in the Show Me state a dead heat with a narrow three point lead for Senator Obama over Senator McCain, 50% to 47% with minor support for both Bob Barr and Ralph Nader. Significantly, it represents the first lead in Missouri for Obama. As recently as last week, McCain held a two point advantage and a month ago, he led by six.
Barack Obama has pulled ahead of John McCain in Missouri.
The latest Fox News/Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in the state shows Obama with 50% of the vote while McCain attracts 47%. Ralph Nader and Bob Barr pick up one percent (1%) each, and two percent (2%) are undecided.
These results are quite a change from a month ago when McCain was up by six points. However, over that month, the national trends and virtually all statewide polling has swung significantly in Obama’s direction.
The fishing cat (Prionailurus viverrinus) found in south-east Asia
One in four mammals is at risk of disappearing forever, according to the latest assessment released today by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), whose ‘red list’ classifies species according to their extinction risk every year.
A gallery of photographs of some of the now endangered species from the UK Guardian.
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which represents 1.5 million public service workers, nurses, hospital staff, nursing home care providers, building services and security guards, in North America, has released this ad attacking Senator McCain’s health care proposals. The ad is a 30 second spot. Let’s just say these two actresses are never going to win any Academy Awards.
Today is an ugly ugly day on the world’s financial markets. As of this hour, London’s FTSE 100 is off 5.36% while the DJ Euro Stoxx 50 index, a barometer of euro zone blue chips, fell 4 percent. The DAX was down 5.5% in Frankfurt and the Paris bourse CAC-40 lost 5.9%. Financial markets were broadly off in India, Japan, Hong Kong, Australia, Taiwan and Korea. The US index, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, opened down 300 points off about 3.0%. The broader market index, the S&P 500, fell 41 points or about 3.7%.
I reflect this morning on my training as an economic historian and I think back to one of the seminal events of the late 19th cenutry, the Panic of 1873, which was a financial crisis that originated in Vienna in the Spring of that year and then spread globally through the rest of the year leading to a pernicious economic downturn that lasted six years. I’ll be reviewing my texts and I’ll write later on the topic and its relevance to the global financial crisis that today is seemingly engulfing us.
There is a fast moving contagion spreading across the world’s financial markets affecting not just the capital markets, the credit markets but also now the prices of commodities. Oil has plunged below $90 a barrel. At first glance, you might see that as good news. It’s not because it is falling too quickly. Markets shouldn’t move so quickly either on the way up or the way the down. Oil is falling because demand is falling as economic activity contracts. Since its peak earlier this year, oil prices have fallen 40%. We seem to be in an asset deflationary spiral. It is these deflationary spirals that prolong economic downturns and turn them into depressions.
Below is a report from Al Jazeera that covers the global financial crisis focusing on the high level of US debt and its implications for the health of the global economy. This past week the National Debt of the United States surpassed $10 trillion dollars. Each segment runs ten minutes.
On the one hand, I am confident that we will now seek to redress the failed economic policies of the last 40 years that led to a second Gilded Age that has seen income inequality in the United States rise to levels not seen since the 1920s but I am also painfully aware that we have just begun an era of severe economic turmoil and contraction. And I am also struck by the fact that George W. Bush is today a helpless man. Thankfully, Secretary Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke are the ones handling the political economy and monetary levers at this time. I cannot but express my derision towards President Bush for his policies at home and abroad have brought about a calamity unlike any which we have faced in the last 80 years.
The top ad is part of the Obama campaign’s pre-emptive strike against the McCain campaign’s upcoming barrage against Senator Obama’s character and his past associations. The ad is a 30 second spot.
The second ad focuses on health care. It is also a 30 second spot. However yesterday, I learned that the Obama campaign has been running an unreleased ad in the battleground states where Obama basically calls government-run health care an extreme and tries to position himself as somebody who wants neither — no government-run health care or all government-run health care. In essence, Obama is taking a single payer health care system off the table. And the single payer health system has been a core plank and goal of the Democratic Party since the Truman Administration. One more reason that trusting Senator Obama is very hard to do. And yet since he does this under the radar, it doesn’t get covered nor reported nor is he villified on the blogs.
Here are ten articles from both the US and international media about the US Presidential race. Highlights of each article provided with a link to the full article. But first a video of a speech by AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka on behalf of Senator Obama.
Personally, I am not as sanguine as Mr. Trumka on Senator Obama being the sum of all progressive hopes. For instance, today I learned that the Obama campaign has been running an unreleased ad in the battleground states where Obama basically calls government-run health care an extreme and tries to position himself as somebody who wants neither — no government-run health care or all government-run health care. In essence, Obama is taking a single payer health care system off the table. And the single payer health system has been a core plank and goal of the Democratic Party since the Truman Administration. One more reason that trusting Senator Obama is very hard to do. And yet since he does this under the radar, it doesn’t get covered nor reported nor is he villified on the blogs.
Appalachian Voters Lean Towards Barack Obama
By Martin Fletcher in the Times of London.
Only one store prospers on Main Street in Chillicothe, a town of 22,000 people on the edge of the Appalachian mountain region in Ohio whose venerable public buildings speak of a happier past. It is Frank’s Pawn Shop. Gary Jacobs, its manager, stands amid the guns, guitars and jewellery brought in by locals. He said: “Right now people would just about sell the shirts off their back.” A customer called Cindy, who works in a prison, chipped in: “Look at me. They own half my stuff. We’re broke. We need a change and we need it quick.”
The town’s largest employers — a truck factory and a paper mill — had shed nearly 1,000 jobs even before the Wall Street meltdown. Figures released on Friday showed local unemployment has reached 8.6 per cent. Food and fuel prices have surged. The value of retirement funds has plummeted. ‘For sale’ signs are everywhere, and the Chillicothe Gazette has already run 280 property foreclosure notices this year.
In three hours, The Times met four Chillicothians like Cindy who backed President Bush in 2004 but now favour Barack Obama — an ominous sign for John McCain because in the past two elections Chillicothe’s vote has precisely mirrored the finely balanced statewide vote.
Well is it too early to start thinking about 2016? I’m frankly shocked. So much for the thesis that Obama couldn’t win in Appalachia. Still, I’ll be stunned if he wins West Virginia. Ohio I can see. Virginia and North Carolina as well.
Between Sept. 16 and 29, Obama outspent McCain on TV in Wisconsin by almost 2-to-1, according to figures provided by a northern Virginia firm that monitors political advertising, TNS Media Intelligence/CMAG.
Obama spent $1,254,281 on local broadcast stations in the state.
McCain spent $657,923.
Obama has enjoyed a similar edge in other battlegrounds, after ramping up his TV spending by roughly 20% a week for the last several weeks, said Evan Tracey, of the ad-tracking firm that provided the data.
“I think McCain is going to have to make some choices” about which states he can best compete with Obama in, Tracey said.
Palin’s Spirited Style Relieves Doubters
By Andrew Ward in the Financial Times.
Doubts about Ms Palin had fed broader questions about Mr McCain’s judgment after his erratic response to the financial crisis over the past two weeks.
While her solid showing against Mr Biden quieted alarm bells, there was no sign yesterday that the debate had altered the dynamic of the election, as attention returned to the Wall Street bail-out and a sharp rise in the monthly unemployment rate.
Having dominated the campaign and energised conservatives after the Republican convention, Ms Palin has been reduced to a sideshow since the financial crisis struck, and both running mates look likely to remain peripheral figures for the rest of the campaign.
Thursday’s debate was livelier than the stoical encounter between the two presidential nominees last week, with Ms Palin bombastic and populist in tone. “Darn right, it was the predator lenders,” she said, when asked who was to blame for the financial crisis. Mr Biden also exceeded expectations with a smooth and assured performance that avoided gaffes and verbosity.
The Obama campaign released this Internet-only ad highlighting Senator McCain’s role in the Savings & Loan crisis and his relationship with Charles Keating, Jr. The ad is a 30 second spot advertising the launch of a new website (it goes live at Noon EDT on Monday October 6th), Keating Economics. The website will feature a 13 minute “documentary” on the scandal from the late 1980s and early 1990s. More on this story from Politico.
I suppose at the end of all this we will have one of these reduced to a bloody pulp characters as the 44th President of the United States.
