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Barack Obama Win - Indications point |
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Indications point to win by Obama
With the US presidential election just a breath away, Democrat Barack Obama is holding an average lead of 6 percentage points over Republican John McCain, according to Bloomberg. The Obama camp is talking about a landslide win, and McCain is battling to overcome his rival’s momentum in the polls, defiantly playing the underdog role.
McCain has blasted the media’s skeptical assessment of his chances in Tuesday’s election. “The pundits have written us off, just as they’ve done several times before,” he said. “We’re points down, but we’re coming back.”
McCain is fighting back in the face of the Bloomberg report that 10 polls released the past week showed Obama with leads ranging from 3 points in a Fox News Poll to 11 points in a New York Times/CBS News survey.
Those poll results underline the polarization of the conservative segment (represented by Fox News) and the liberal stream (represented by the New York Times).
Bloomberg reports Obama holds an advantage in contested states, including Ohio, Virginia, New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada, all of which were won by Republican George W. Bush in 2004. McCain is in close races with Obama in Florida, North Carolina, Indiana and North Dakota.
Those states were won by Bush in 2004 and McCain needs to win them in order to have a chance of gaining the 270 Electoral College votes required to win the presidency. He is fighting an uphill battle.
The odds are such that an Obama victory in just one of the four key states that voted Republican in 2004—Ohio, Florida, Virginia, and North Carolina—would leave McCain with insurmountable hurdles to winning the election.
Media influence
Nationally, according to Bloomberg, Obama leads McCain 51 percent to 43 percent in a Gallup daily tracking polls of those deemed likely to vote, based on past voting behavior and voting intentions. The Fox poll of likely voters found 47 percent would vote for Obama and 44 percent for McCain if the election were held today.
The New York Times/CBS poll showed 52 percent of likely voters favored Obama while 41 percent supported McCain. These poll results highlighted the issue related to the media influence in creating a bandwagon effect for the Illinois senator.
Obama has enjoyed a largely positive coverage in the media. He has won editorial support from the newspapers at the ratio of three to one. This has led McCain supporters to believe that they had not gotten a fair shake from the media, based on a study by the Center for Media and Public Affairs.
Policy contrasts
The comment, titled “The Case against Obama,” said: “If the polls hold, the American people will elect Barack Obama as their 44th president. He is a man of prodigious political talents who exudes grace, equanimity and self-possession. He is unflappable, possesses a first-rate mind, and is capable of inspiring rhetoric. And he would be a very bad choice for president…
“Obama, while exuding centrist style and employing soothing rhetoric, has amassed a record that places him on the extreme left end of our political spectrum, whether the subject is taxes, trade, health care, the size and role of the federal government, the federal courts, missile defense, or virtually any other policy area.”
This puts the closing days of the campaign in the framework of the ideological canvas that defines sharply the policy contrasts of the Democrats and the Republicans as the United States confronts the worst economic crisis to face it since the Great Depression of the 1930s. |
Interesting 
