McCain Campaign Convinced Race is Tight

McCain and his campaign are more convinced then ever that they will win this campaign. Their internal polling shows the races in all of the key battleground states within the margin of error and apparently they even believe that Iowa is back within play.

The guy in charge of polling for McCain is Bill McInturff and he is a skilled professional with a reputation for honesty and competence. If he says this race is close then he has good reason to say so.

In the meantime Mason-Dixon reported the Pennsylvania race at just +4 points for Obama.

I am also seeing mathematical rumblings that bother me. I’m especially bothered by the fact that the polls are scattered all over the map. They can’t all be right. The polls are clearly making different assumptions and crunching the numbers different ways to be getting such a variation.

That means that some are right and some are wrong. Averages, if they include garbage data, can be extremely misleading and all of the projection sites I’ve seen use weighted averages of one type or another.

What if McInurff’s assumptions and number crunching are the only ones that are accurate? If that’s the case, then November 4th is going to turn into a disappointment of colossal proportions.
The other possibility is simply that his data is fresher than the public polls and he is already seeing a trend that may, or may not, become apparent in the days just before the election. If this is the situation it will give the election projection sites an opportunity to wipe a little of the egg off their faces.

If nothing else McCain appears to have gotten his campaign focused on the economy and particularly on the mantras that Obama wants to "redistribute wealth" and will penalize those who work hard and succeed. I think the Joe the Plumber angle, which his campaign has continued to pound away at despite it being discounted by many as a gimmick, is having an effect as well.

Can the gap be closed quickly enough in enough places is the question. They seem to have a high degree of confidence that they are doing precisely that.

Dang, I’m SO depressed now. I was really hoping I was way off base thinking that this election was going to be a real nail biter.