McCain’s chances, in essence, boil down to the polling being significantly wrong, for such reasons as a Bradley Effect or “Shy Tory” Effect, or extreme complacency among Democratic voters. Our model recognizes that the actual margins of error in polling are much larger than the purported ones, and that when polls are wrong, they are often wrong in the same direction.
However, even if these phenomenon are manifest to some extent, it is unlikely that they are worth a full 6-7 points for McCain. Moreover, there are at least as many reasons to think that the polls are understating Obama’s support, because of such factors as the cellphone problem, his superior groundgame operation, and the substantial lead that he has built up among early voters.
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Sorry, I meant to say:
“Even if McCain only gets 10% of these bitter folks, that’s 504,000 votes. In a contest that could come down to a few hundred thousand votes in each battleground state, those defections could be critical. Remember: Obama’s electoral lead is premised on leads within the margin of error in almost all battleground states.”
I had that number at 1.8 million in my earlier post, but 1.8 million would be 10% of Hilary’s entire voting population, as opposed to 10% of the 28% who stubbornly refuse to support Obama.
