Whether people are stealing McCain signs out of people’s yards or people are just removing them from their yards on their own, there are noticeably less McCain signs in Chester County, Pennsylvania than there were in September. Roughly 90% of the signs I’m seeing that are actually on someone’s property (versus, on public land) are for Democratic candidates. And this is an historically Republican county.
The latest Pew Research poll tells the story.
Barack Obama leads John McCain by a 52% to 36% margin in Pew’s latest nationwide survey of 1,325 registered voters. This is the fourth consecutive survey that has found support for the Republican candidate edging down. In contrast, since early October weekly Pew surveys have shown about the same number of respondents saying they back Obama. When the sample is narrowed to those most likely to vote, Obama leads by 53% to 38%.
McCain cannot afford to crater late because he already has a major built-in deficit that he must overcome on election day.
Just as ominous for the Republican candidate, Obama holds a 53% to 34% lead among the sizable minority of voters (15%) who say they have already voted. Among those who plan to vote early but have not yet voted (16% of voters), 56% support Obama, while 37% support McCain.
In other words, Obama is running 19 points ahead right now. That would be a total wipeout with staggering downticket fallout. McCain should be able to close the gap a little on Election Day, but the survey shows that McCain is trailing by 18 points among people that plan to vote on election day.
A big premise of the Republican spinmeisters is that the undecided voters will break late for John McCain, but it doesn’t look like that is happening. I think McCain voters are actually changing their minds as they realize that their candidate is unlikely to win.
I have always thought that this election would break very hard in one direction or the other. One candidate was going to win the argument and we would not see another nailbiting election. I think we’re beginning to see that now.
