The Myth of a Toss-up Election

"Too close to call." "Within the margin of error." "A statistical dead heat." If you've been following news coverage of the 2008 presidential election, you're probably familiar with these phrases. Media commentary on the presidential horserace, reflecting the results of a series of new national polls, has strained to make a case for a hotly contested election that is essentially up for grabs.

Signs of Barack Obama's weaknesses allegedly abound. The huge generic Democratic Party advantage is not reflected in the McCain-Obama pairings in national polls. Why, according to the constant refrain, hasn't Obama put this election away? A large number of Clinton supporters in the primaries refuse to commit to Obama. White working class and senior voters tilt decidedly to McCain. Racial resentment limits Obama's support among these two critical voting blocs. Enthusiasm among young voters and African-Americans, two groups strongly attracted to Obama, is waning. McCain is widely seen as better prepared to step up to the responsibilities of commander-in-chief. Blah, blah, blah.

While no election outcome is guaranteed and McCain's prospects could improve over the next three and a half months, virtually all of the evidence that we have reviewed - historical patterns, structural features of this election cycle, and national and state polls conducted over the last several months - points to a comfortable Obama/Democratic party victory in November. Trumpeting this race as a toss-up, almost certain to produce another nail-biter finish, distorts the evidence and does a disservice to readers and viewers who rely upon such punditry.

Consider the following.

Except for a few days when the Gallup and Rasmussen tracking polls showed a tie, Barack Obama has led John McCain in every national poll in the past two months. Obama's average margin has consistently been in the 4-6 point range during this time. By contrast, the polls in 2000 and 2004 showed much more variation over time.

State polling data have also consistently given Obama the advantage. According to realclearpolitics.com, Obama is currently leading in 26 states and the District of Columbia with a total of 322 electoral votes; McCain is currently leading in 24 states with a total of 216 electoral votes. Obama is leading in every state carried by John Kerry in 2004 along with seven states carried by George Bush: Iowa, New Mexico, Ohio, Indiana, Virginia, Nevada and Colorado.

Obama is leading in 11 of the 12 swing states that were decided by a margin of five points or less in 2004 including five of the six that were carried by George Bush. And while Obama has a comfortable lead in every state that John Kerry won by a margin of more than five points in 2004, McCain is in a difficult battle in a number of states that Bush carried by a margin of more than five points including such solidly red states as Indiana, Montana, North Dakota, Virginia, and North Carolina.

And remember these June and July polls may well understate Obama's eventual margin. Ronald Reagan did not capitalize on the huge structural advantage Republicans enjoyed in 1980 until after the party conventions and presidential debate. It took a while and a sufficient level of comfort with the challenger for anti-Carter votes to translate into support for Reagan. If Obama's performance over the last eighteen months is any guide, a similar pattern is likely to unfold in 2008.

Aside from the horserace results, there is evidence of a growing Democratic Party advantage in the electorate. A recent analysis by Rhodes Cook of voter registration data in 29 states and the District of Columbia that permit registration by party shows that since November of 2004, Democratic registration has increased by almost 700 thousand while Republican registration has declined by almost one million.

Democrats now enjoy a substantial lead over Republicans in voter identification. According to the Gallup Poll, the two parties have gone from near parity four years ago to a 12 point Democratic advantage in the first half of 2008. And polling data continue to show that Democrats are more satisfied with their party's nominee than Republicans voters and more highly motivated to vote. While Republicans normally benefit from higher turnout among their supporters, that may not be the case this year.

In order to defeat Barack Obama, John McCain will have to convince a lot of disgruntled Republicans to turn out and vote for him. But mobilizing the Republican base, a strategy employed successfully by Karl Rove in 2002 and 2004, won't be enough for McCain to win in 2008. He'll also have to convince a majority of independents and a substantial number of Democrats to vote for him. That's a task that proved too difficult even for Rove in the 2006 midterm election and it may be even more difficult in 2008. That's because since 2006 the political environment has gone from bad to worse for Republicans.

It is no exaggeration to say that the political environment this year is one of the worst for a party in the White House in the past sixty years. You have to go all the way back to 1952 to find an election involving the combination of an unpopular president, an unpopular war, and an economy teetering on the brink of recession. 1952 was also the last time the party in power wasn't represented by either the incumbent president or the incumbent vice-president. But the fact that Democrat Harry Truman wasn't on the ballot didn't stop Republican Dwight Eisenhower from inflicting a crushing defeat on Truman's would-be successor, Adlai Stevenson.

Barack Obama is not a national hero like Dwight Eisenhower, and George Bush is certainly no Harry Truman. But if history is any guide, and absent a dramatic change in election fundamentals or an utter collapse of the Obama candidacy, John McCain is likely to suffer the same fate as Adlai Stevenson.

Abramowitz is a professor of political science at Emory University. Mann is a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution. Sabato is a professor of politics at the University of Virginia and director of its Center for Politics.

Comments

[dsbsh]

Not that it's a big deal, but the third author's name is Larry Sabato, not Sabat. (Correcting it might prevent a troll from labeling Sabat a Muslim name like Sadat :)

[XME]

You have no idea how much I hope to God you're right!!

[rbenjamin]

Stats are soooo dull. For the media, a tight nail-biting election is more infotaining than one that's not so close. The candidates like the perception of a close race too - the underdog maintains hope, the top-dog avoids complacency.

[DaOne]

Obama 328
McCain 210

[jw]

I can think of two good reasons the MSM keep saying this is a close race. One is that they hope to keep viewers interested and watching the pap they present as news. The other is that stealing the election will be a lot harder if they project a landslide for Obama.

[SeanGardner]

Fabulous post!

Yes, Obama is going to have a very comfortable victory this fall. My view is not influenced by the NATIONAL POLLS, but by the STATE POLLS that show him up in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, and even in Southern states like Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, and Missouri. Moreover, Obama is up in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, Montana, and Iowa, and is within striking distance of McCain in North Dakota, Alaska, and Mississippi.

This is going to be a great election. Obama could potentially win as many as 30 states.

[ianrmcdonald]

A fabulous post, one that is finally willing to state the obvious.

But I would also cut the media some slack on this. As the authors indicate, things could change. And there is the x factor of voters' willingness, in the end, to vote for an African American. They may, but the situation is new in that regard.

[SonofLiberty1]

Usually, after the election...people go home and forget about politics for a while..

I say, it's time not to take down the signs at all after the election.

Whoever wins...

We should scream and holler and march if they don't act to change things!

[SonofLiberty1]

I am 51 years old, have been a democratic political activist most of my adult life.

I spearheaded the Hart For President Primary here in Pennsyvania's 8th CD and was successfully elected a delegate in 1984.

This past year I worked on one of the draft Gore campaigns as the PA. Director & NE Regional Director # 2.

I have voted in every single presidential election since I was 18.

This year, I wonder if I will vote.

I can not stand what Bush and his party have done to me and my nation.

BUT...

I equally can't stand the IDIOT THINGS OBAMA HAS SAID.

I have NEVER been so torn about how to vote.

Maybe I will stay home....because I can not, in good conscience, give either person my vote.

[Kalifornika]

Thanks for being so specific. You sound really torn. . .

[conservativesoncrack]

If you had indeed been as involved as you claim you would see clearly that there really are no options (and I personally do not think that is a bad thing). You would be jumping on the Obama band wagon and doing the right thing, not only for your own self interest and party, but indeed, what is best for America! Any belief or claim that they are both bad so it might be better to vote for a third party or not vote at all is nonsense and akin to sticking ones head where the sun don' shine... America cannot be subjected to another four years of this nonsense...

[charlesdickens]

I totally agree. I could never vote for the Republican "values"; however Obama is too much of a blank slate not to be filled in by opportunistic pandering. I guess I will probably stay home, also.

[Cathexis]

So ... you're saying "Republican policies suck, but ... Obama is too much of an unknown?"

One choice is obviously and hsitorically bad and the other ... you feel you don't know enough about or are concerned about 'pandering' ...

Hmmm ... I'd suspect that you might be a GOP troll or that you really haven't thought this out sufficiently.

[Cathexis]

Obama is tarnished for me, as well ... but not tarnished enough that i won't continue to support him. After 8 years of GOP crimes and incompetence, the Dem candidate would have to sacrifice puppies to Satan on live TV before I considered not voting Dem.

Obama will not be perfect, true. I'm fortunate in that I never thought he would be. But the GOP must be stopped and marginalized and Obama is more than good enough for me to continue supporting.

[gde]

If you are Green, vote for the Green candidate. Or Libertarian, if that is how you feel. Write in if you have to. Not voting is a vote for the status quo you say you deplore.

[gretchenart]

The MSM and powers that be--most of which are giving McCain a free ride and tacit support-- want to create the illusion of a close race again in the hopes they can somehow steal this one too with their unaudited manipulatable electronic voting machines that have been shown to reverse votes without a trace, plus the caging lists, voter id requirements designed to eliminate more democratic-leaning voters than the right wingers, etc.

Obama will have to win by an absolute landslide to overcome the goal of somehow making it a "close" race again, where votes can be flipped, etc.

And that assumes that the "October surprise" is not one that devastates certain voting populations or somehow drastically affects the people who can vote or not or the candidate's well-being. A lot of us are holding our breath and hoping against hope that the right wing does not panic violently when faced with an almost certain loss!!

[wordvarc]

.
The media enjoyed good ratings during the democratic race.

Now they are like sport announcers trying to make interesting a blowout game.

But I warily pay attention after being incredulous that w's aggressive fear and hate mongering won him a second term.

People trample each other in fear when somebody yells "Fire!" in a crowded building. Any real crisis or fire is irrelevant...at first. People identify with the aggressor...until they wake up.

Hopefully we've awakened to the expensive and decades long destructive consequences of the rovian neocon RNC/GOP realities of the past 10 years.

.

[wordvarc]

.

Even my most conservative zealot neocon Republican friends describe McCain as "too old" and undependable.

The 2008 presidential race is Obama's to lose.

.

[naschkatze]

My huge thanks to the three of you for posting this. It's analogous to Gen. Clark calling out McCain's putative qualifications to become commander-in-chief. We need a chorus of little boys (nothing intended) calling out that the emperor has no clothes because McCain is naked as a jay on every issue, not on many issues but on every one. I'm so sick of the media aping Fox News and their "fair and balanced" approach. They are duty bound to make it a close contest even if it is not one? Just because Obama scores huge points, they have to give McCain "equal" treatment? What for? It's not the truth. The truth is that it's "no contest" between Obama and McCain.

[HelenBack]

We are in a war based on lies, personal ambition and business connections. America has been attacked in New York City and with the greatest armed forces in the world, seven years and
$1,000,000­,000,000.0­0 we allegedly can't find the attackers. Two oilmen run the country and we are paying almost five times the price of gasoline than when they came into office. Our economy is in the crapper, our national reputation sucks, we are the world's largest polluter and the candidate of change is only up by an average of 6% nationally.

This conservative republican admisistration has gone beyond the Atwater mindset into a whole anarchical phase. They are past breaking the law and laughing at us to do something about it. With less 4 months left there telling what these monsters will/can pull off just to keep the White house.

What is the one aspect McCain polls higher than Obama? What is the theme we keep hearing introduced from surrogates and asked by the MSM? What would be the most horrible thing to happen to this country again? Is it too sick to think about? Think about the last 8 years and tell me certain elements are not above it. I'm not a conspiracy nut but I NEVER thought I would see the blatant disregard for the law/Constitution or moral sense of fair play I have witnessed in the last 8 years. Yes, it is too horrible to think about, which is exactly why we should.

[gurukalehuru]

There's one thing that had me curious, and that was: when do the polls come out? Is it every other Tuesday? The first Monday in the month? Twice a week? Do they have regular schedules and if so, why aren't they posted?
Then I figured it out. They come out whenever they come up with a set of numbers that keep McCain in the race. I don't believe that they just want to keep it close because that sells papers. An Obama landslide is very exciting news. I believe they actively support the Republican party, because the major networks, and large newspaper chains, are owned by extremely wealthy people.
This cannot be close. We must win by a landslide, or they will steal it again.