Smooth Execution Gives Obama a Commanding Lead

FOOTBALL METAPHOR FOR AFTER THE DEBATE

Obama opens up a 24 point lead late in the third quarter.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN 24 POINTS?

National polls only show Obama leading by single digits. So why do I say that he has such a big lead over John McCain?

The answer is in the electoral college, the recent trends, and the time remaining until the election. All of the major states that McCain might have been able to win back to the republican side that went for John Kerry have strongly moved towards Barack Obama. Even Karl Rove shows Obama in the lead in the electoral college. Obama is showing leads in states like Virginia and North Carolina that no democratic presidential candidate has won in recent memory. Add to that Obama's growing lead in Ohio and Florida--both states the McCain absolutely has to win--and it becomes increasingly difficult to imagine any circumstance that would bring about a McCain victory.

THE DEBATE: WHAT DIDN'T HAPPEN

McCain needed a big play, something to change the momentum of the race and it didn't happen. All of the analysts agree on this point. With just four weeks until the election, the trends are now likely to continue to trend even more strongly towards Obama. Failing some drastic mistake by the Obama campaign or some miraculous accomplishment by the McCain team, this election is over.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG?

Since I have now made such a strong assertion that Obama is likely to win, I am going to consider various ways I could be mistaken.

THE CLEVELAND BROWS FACTOR

As I mentioned in my first post, I grew up watching the Cleveland Browns loose games even when they were well ahead going into the fourth quarter. This game--this election--could still be lost by Obama. But even the Cleveland Browns would have a difficult time loosing a game ahead by 24 points late in the third quarter if they had been playing as well as the Obama campaign has been executing.

OK, that is really a stretch of the football metaphor, but it is a point worth noting: the Obama campaign is a very disciplined one and has increasingly run an essentially error-free campaign recently. There is no good reason to assume that they are going to start making big mistakes now.

Organizations tend to mimic their founders and if one thing we have learned about Obama is that he is always calm and cool-headed. He has even been compared ( if unfavorably ) with an ice-cube. In stress, we are told, we become more like ourselves, and this suggests that the Obama campaign is likely to become even more disciplined and focused as election day approaches.

McCain, on the other hand, was a fighter-pilot and a gambler (literally--he likes high-stakes craps ). He seems to view leadership as requiring immediate, direct, hands-on action and if something isn't working right now, you need to try something else. With time running out, the McCain campaign is more likely to take big risks and make big mistakes. And, to stretch the football metaphor past the breaking point, the McCain/Stabler offense is just not executing and the Obama/Shula-zone defense isn't letting anything through.

THE I'M JUST PLAIN WRONG FACTOR

I could be wrong. I could be reading the debate results wrong ( even though I am going off the analysis of others on CNN and MSNBC and polls they have done). The voters, en masse, may have seen an entirely different debate than the one that I thought I saw.

Or I could be seeing trends that really aren't there, or wrong about their direction. All these seem to be possibilities but I judge the far, far more likely possibility is that the trends are what they seem to me to be.

THE POLLS COULD BE WRONG

Much of my analysis is based upon various polls. They could all be wrong. The polls were wrong in 2004 in predicting the election outcome. Why not now?

In 2004 there were conflicting polls and trends. This time almost all of the polls and all of the trends are moving in the same direction. With the exception of my pithy, incredibly clever football metaphors, everything I have written is essentially a condensed version of other analyses and simple extrapolations from electoral college maps.

THE RACE FACTOR

Some have argued that the polls may be wrong because of Obama's race--that many people are saying they will vote for Obama but actually will not because they are unwilling to admit to the pollsters (or perhaps even themselves) that they will not vote for a black candidate. At least one analyst argues that the so-called Bradley effect is unlikely to be a major factor in this election but we won't know for certain until election day.

I COULD BE WRONG ABOUT HOW I AM WRONG

I could even be wrong for some reason that I cannot currently imagine.

BUT, FINALLY, MY BEST GUESS

I'm not a gambler. But if I were, I would consider Obama to be a pretty safe bet. There are those that do bet on elections and they are showing strongly positive for Obama as well. If I were to make a call on the election now, I would bet that Obama wins easily in the electoral college carrying at Ohio and Florida both. But at the very worst, I expect Obama to carry Iowa, New Mexico and Colorado along with all of the states that John Kerry won in 2004.