Quote:
Originally Posted by Vegas Vic
Do you have any opinion as to why Obama is barely ahead of McCain in head to head polls at this time? Given the voter dissatisfaction with the Bush administration, he should be at least 20 points ahead. Historically, the potential Democrat nominee is well ahead of the potential Republican nominee at this point, and that tends to change drastically during the summer and fall.
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Head-to-head polls in February mean nothing. You know that already.
We're all just armchair prognosticators and as we get new information, our ideas about what might happen will change. Because surely no one saw things being how they are right now, conventional wisdom be damned. At least on the Democratic side anyway.
With all of that said, I'm throwing out convention and the past and I'm saying that historically the two main candidates in the general election were usually cut from the same cloth, making it easier to compare them to each other relatively equally.
Polling isn't as random as one would suggest and because of the demographics of the Democratic race, the Bradley effect can be thrown out of the equation. People aren't going to vote for McCain because they think he can be a better President than Hillary or Obama.
The GOP used depressed voter turnout of the Democratic base to fuel their victory in 2004. That's not going to happen this year unless someone plans to go kill a few million people or perhaps, some other world altering situation happens to change the complexion of this race.
But I'll go ahead and put all of this out here so that when I'm wrong, we can bump this part of the thread and all of the fortune tellers among us can point to how history taught us so much. I'll be impressed if that's the case, too. Not because I mind being wrong in this case, because I wouldn't.
Personal feelings aside, I'm thinking solely about the outcome and in the end, I think that 'history' of a different sort will be the trump card in this race.
But again...there is a long road ahead, a lot can happen and we shall see it all unfold.