My buddy Matt Burke's take on the election

(My buddy Matt Burke worked for John McCain's 2000 campaign and now works as a lawyer in Atlanta.)


Things are not spinning out of control

October 16, 2008

By Matt Burke

I will admit right upfront that I am not feeling too good about this election. I have been having conversations with myself, wondering if an Obama election will really be all that bad for America. Thankfully, after 5 seconds I realize that it will, and my strength to fight comes back.

As of this date, Senator Obama is in the lead, however it is not as comfortable of a margin as has been advertised. I suspect the real percentage lead is about 4%, and it is a shaky one. There are several things that can happen which will reverse this lead. In no particular order, here they are:

a) Already there is talk that during the months of November and December, after a presumptive Obama victory, Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid are going to halt offshore drilling and pass another multi- billion dollar stimulus package. If the voters find out about this before Election Day, that would seriously derail Obama’s election chances. Recall 1992, when the voters elected President Clinton for “It’s the economy stupid” and the first issue he tackled before he was even inaugurated was gays in the military. Many Americans were left saying that “gays in the military” was not what they voted for. Americans are not voting for Obama to halt offshore drilling. This information could become similar to the Wellstone memorial in 2002. Recall that in 2002, Dems were expected to pick up large gains in the House and Senate, until their performance at the Paul Wellstone memorial. They were then handed a rousing defeat. Get this information out NOW!!!!
b) During the primaries, Obama had a hard time closing with undecided voters. Most undecideds went overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton, choosing experience over novelty. Most polls show 5-10% undecided voters out there, which will be a large late pickup for McCain.
c) During the primaries, Obama never performed as well as the polls predicted. Most times, he underperformed by 3-7%. There are many reasons for this, including the much reported “Bradley effect”, known as racial leakage. Whatever the reason, expect Obama to underperform when compared to the polls.
d) Recent Presidential Elections have shown a tendency to inaccurately predict Democratic advantages. A political science professor calculated that recent Presidential polls inflate Democratic numbers by an average of 1.3% and under-report Republican numbers by 1.2%. So, this would mean that the race is 2.5% closer than the polls are reporting.
e) Not only has there been a tendency to inaccurately predict Democratic advantages, this year has been worse. Most pollsters have been oversampling Democratic voters, which greatly affect the outcome of the poll. A recent poll of 700 voters came back with 230 Democrats polled, 223 Republicans and the rest Independent. The poll took those numbers and decided that they did not reflect America, so they weighted the poll so that the final numbers showed 248 Democrats, 211 Republicans and the rest independent. Are any of you shocked that this poll showed a 10 point Obama lead? Recent election results have shown that we are a 35% Democrat, 32% Republican country. If the polls were similarly weighted, I bet that we would show this race is within the margin of error.
f) Another reason for the oversampling formula being used in favor of Democrats is the increase in voter registrations for the Democratic Party. As we have seen from recent news regarding ACORN and voter registration, that increase in voter registration is based on flawed numbers. Mickey Mouse is not going to show up on Election Day, nor is that man who was registered 73 times going to vote 73 times!!

I realize that I may be looking at things through rose colored glasses, but I do believe that things are not as bad as they seem.