I think #7 resonates strongly as I keep hearing so many anecdotes about people who are reluctant to speak up about not wanting to vote for Obama, but who are relieved to hear that others think the same way about the issues. Honestly, each election cycle we conservatives become more and more like some furtive rebel organization. I include myself as I have withheld my opinions until the person I am talking to expresses something that identifies them as receptive to discussing all the cons of voting for Obama and the pros of voting for McCain.

If McCain loses, by 2012 we’ll be identifying each other with secret handshakes. But, like you, I really believe that the morning of Nov. 5th will find us in pretty good shape.

Great job of pointing out that things are not nearly as dire for McCain as the media would have us believe. With everything that has gone down in the financial sector, it’s pretty incredible that this is a five-point race (Rasmussen, IBD, Gallup-likely voters). The fact that this is not a blowout simply means that the public is not comfortable with Obama and his pack of strange/dangerous friends.

I think you touch on The Bradley-Wilder effect in a couple of your points, though not mentioning it outright. Again, this is something the media is trying to ignore, even though it was clearly at play in several Democratic primary states, most notably, NH and CA. In addition, late deciders broke against Obama by more than 2-1 in most states.

Finally, it may be wishful thinking on my part, but a Powell endorsement tomorrow may not help Obama at all. Average working people may sense that a coalition of the media, Hollywood, and back-stabbing conservatives (Hitchens, Christopher Buckley) are trying to hand this thing to Obama, and it may be a reason that the polls have narrowed over the last week.

Rasmussen Trend Line

Date McCain Obama Spread

10/18/2008 45% 50% Obama +5

10/17/2008 46% 50% Obama +4

10/16/2008 46% 50% Obama +4

10/15/2008 45% 50% Obama +5

10/14/2008 45% 50% Obama +5

10/13/2008 45% 50% Obama +5

10/12/2008 45% 51% Obama +6

10/11/2008 45% 52% Obama +7

10/10/2008 45% 50% Obama +5

10/09/2008 45% 50% Obama +5

10/08/2008 45% 51% Obama +6

10/07/2008 44% 52% Obama +8

10/06/2008 44% 52% Obama +8

10/05/2008 44% 51% Obama +7

10/04/2008 45% 51% Obama +6

This would indicate that over a 11 day period from 10-7 to 10-17 that the trend of the movement for voters was towards McCain by 4 points. At this rate, McCain would be ahead of Obama by 2 points on 11-4. Add to this any polling inaccuracy. An Obama campaign advisor concedes that the poll numbers need to be 15 in favor of Obama to win due to hiistorical inaccuracies. Under this scenario, McCain would win by as much as 17%.

is if conservatives get depressed and stay home. I’m no Hillary supporter, but you should read the posts on Hillbuzz. Because of what I’ve read about what’s going on via the ground in swing states, I think McCain will win as well. Everyone buck up.

5

WE decide elections based on actual votes not polls, and most all repub winners on election day were behind in polls up until 72 hours before that day.

I think there is a lot of merit in this.

The author contends that the Polling process itself, even when objectively administered and controlled, may well be skewed leftward by 5% or more due to unconscious psychological forces that neither the Poll questioner nor responder can control.

Secondly, with the advent of ACORN pushing the voter registrations in a seemingly non-partisan fashion I often wonder how the polls reflect the increase in *registered *Dem’s as part of the weighting that might be done?

If per chance the polls are weighted by the registered Dem’s, then of course it stands to reason (at least in my little world) that polls would reflect this, rendering them potentially useless.

I don’t have a problem. I do it ’cause I like it. I can stop any time I want.

And thanks very much for the post.

Great and encouraging post!!
Your inoculation of optimism and common sense is something I’ll inject daily and embrace wholeheartedly ’til The One’s formidable demise.

Thank’s for rallying the troops and dumping the kool-aid from our dixie cups.

S. ealed
W. ith
A.
K iss lol wink wink !

I’ve been mulling it over since I saw it a while back.

What I’ve come up with is, we need to get the message out–let people know that it it OK to vote for McCain. But how? It’s got to be done in groups–there is no safety alone, not when they will call you racist, attempt to incite violence and shout you down. And every public attempt MUST be video recorded.

3 things: 1) We must communicate–beyond the internet, how do we reach those millions who aren’t political junkies?
2) We must have a plan of action–how do we get the message out?
3) Message control–what is the most effective way to communicate to others that you disagree with the lies, that you will stand up in the face of conformity, that it is OK to vote how you please, that it is not racist to vote–and say your going to vote–against Obama?

Mini-rallies/marches? Would that work?

Gather together a list of 527s willing to fight?

As to the letters, I think putting your name and reputation behind a note would be huge.

How about a form-type letter (there’s got to be some eloquent speech-writers out there), one page, 3 or 4 points why I’M voting FOR McCain. A mini Declaration of Independence that 10 or 15 fellows could sign and pass out. Each community could copy it and affix their names.

Not being all the involved in politics when that became a political term I have to first admit I have only a rudimentary understanding of it which is:

Pollsters got feedback that this guy Bradley was favored to win but in the final results he lost by a pretty big margin, all things considered. They blamed it on race, that people said they would vote for the guy but when they got in the booth they couldn’t bring themselves to vote for a black guy.

There’s another explanation, well known in psychology although I forget the term now if there was one and that was the subjects’ predisposition to tell the researcher what the researcher wanted to hear. The subjects try to guess what the researcher wants to hear and make “guesses” accordingly. Happens all the time on questionaires, surveys, etc. I can fake a Myers-Brigg, or even an MMPI in a heartbeat if I think the tester wants a certain personality type.

With the media all ga-ga over Obama, how many of those supposed supporters of Obama are just telling the pollsters what they thing the pollsters want to hear?

Another explanation is they just want to see the looks on Reid’s and Pelosi’s faces when they once again lose. Not to mention the temper tantrums should be quite entertaining. (j/k)

http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1600

I recommended this diary because no matter how anyone “feels” because of the poll numbers, quitting is never an option for any team.

Beyond that, I’d like to say something that speaks to the way Republicans will need to reorganize themselves after this election:

We’re going to have to become much more coherent, proactive, and unified. We’re going to need to recognize that bad news about Republicans will always be front-paged, highlighted and underlined in 150 point type while bad news about Democrats will be systematically buried, relegated to the B-section of the newspaper, or sugarcoated.

It means that we need to learn a few lessons from the major disasters of the past several years and learn them honestly:

1) Our house needs to be squeaky clean. At the first whiff of trouble concerning any members of Congress, the party leadership will need to take firm and swift action to prevent organizations like C.R.E.W. from dropping them on us at the time of their choosing, usually right before an election. This means that every Republican elected official in this country is going to have to hold themselves — voluntarily — to the highest possible ethical standards and not just that: they will need to understand that in an internet media age, even the appearance of malfeasance is deadly.

2) We are going to have to fight very hard for our core principles of lower taxes, less government intervention, originalist interpretation of the Constitution, strong national defense, and economic opportunity based on the free market. We are going to have to learn to become ten times as vigorous at pointing out the Left’s undermining of these principles and hold them up to shame for it. It’s going to take a level of determination and sophistication that so far we haven’t been able to muster.

3) We absolutely need to STOP the recent trend of Republicans “rebranding” themselves and going off in their own directions. We’ve got at least 100 different voices in this party now all trying to talk at the same time. To accomplish that we will need to select people for leadership positions who are of absolutely unimpeachable leadership quality and who can strike the whip.

4) This party can never again afford to make naive public statements of the kind that have been turned into national catchphrases by our opponents. There can never be another “mission accomplished” photo-op, as innocent as that was. There can never be another sentence in the State of the Union address like the one about Niger. There can never be glib and tone-deaf jokes about “Wall Street Getting Drunk”. Every single Republican in elected office is going to need to become truly sophisticated in their understanding of how their words play in the media.

5) We need to be able to discern and understand the warning signs and take steps to prevent situations from getting worse — before they turn into problems. People in the highest echelons of business have known about the impending financial crisis for more than a year now based on the real estate bubble, and Republicans didn’t do enough to talk about it openly and make it stick to the Democrats. Instead what we did, in terms of public perception, was react to a crisis that had already occurred. We’re much smarter than that, but for some reason we’re not applying it at the right time. We should have been talking about the real estate bubble and the impending financial crisis in October of last year. It continued to snowball, and we are getting hammered because of that.

6) We are going to have to turn the tables on the Democrats in the same way they did to us after 2005, except harder and smarter. There can never again be a person like Tom Delay who attempts to invoke the Federal Government over someone like Terri Schiavo to distract attention from his own problems. EVER.

That does not mean that this party needs to abandon pro-life principles. It means that we can’t grandstand on them in a way that will backfire on us. And backfire they did.

It’s going to be a difficult time, ladies and gentlemen. We’re going to be in the minority and outgunned and outflanked by a greater margin than we are now. But so was Washington during the Revolutionary War. We need some of the best minds in our Party to help heal the divisions and get us moving together again.

Why is everyone picking on the Polls, nothing wrong with Polish people. Some of my family members are Polls.

Relax… read it again… just in case you’re too uptight today let me spell out it was a joke… Interjection of a little (yes, very little) levity is all.

“Do whatever you can to let normal people know they are not alone out there.”

For a guy claiming to want to change people’s minds and convince as many people as he can, you’re going about this the wrong way.

As much as I disagree with the left, the Obama campaign and the zealots who preach it manage to at least attempt to be inclusive. Saying that people who agree with you are normal and the ones who don’t are somehow not normal is not going to get us any points.

Even if you think we’re winning, it doesn’t hurt to play like you’re losing.

Looking back at the 2004 election:

Just in time for Election Day to get some Republicans to stay home:

“Campaign 2004 Predictions

Zogby: Kerry 311, Bush 213…
02-Nov-04
Campaign 2004 Predictions”

excerpt http://archive.democrats.com/preview.cfm?term=Campaign+2004+Predictions

With this election Zogby might use a different strategy, but whatever he does, please do not trust him.

PBS has an online poll posted, asking if Sarah Palin
is qualified.

The poll will be reported on PBS and picked up by
mainstream media. It can influence undecided voters
in swing states.

Please do two things — takes 20 seconds.

1) Click on link and vote YES!

Here’s the link:

PBS Sarah Palin Poll

2) Then send this to every McCain-Palin supporter
you know, and urge them to vote and pass it on.

This morning the poll was nearly 50-50. The last thing we need is PBS saying their viewers don’t think Sarah Palin is qualified.

You, can do something to help out John McCain & Sarah Palin! Turn the Tables and do something to spread despair and defeatism among the libs by exposing the truth and help turn those numbers around, especially the ones that count on election day!

Share these Links!

Eduardo Verastegui exposes Obama’s extreme record

Sign this Petition to Support the Sanctity of Life

Obama promises ACORN will set his agenda for CHANGE

Ayers & Obama Audio – Compares their views!

Did Obama support of Odinga violate the Logan Act?

Back on Oct. 9 I sent the following to a few friends and family members:

Thought I’d just jot down some random thoughts as to why I believe McCain will win (barring some unforeseen gaffe by him or Palin):

October 9, 2008

Reasons why McCain should win:

First, most people who are called by pollsters (I’ve heard polling companies say 80 per cent) will not participate in a poll. I believe the overwhelming majority of those who hang up the phone are busy conservatives trying to make a living (like me) rather than bored liberals sitting at home munching on potato chips as they await their next government check. The polls have been very, very wrong in the past. On the eve of Reagan’s landslides, it was “too close to call” according to the pollsters and the “mainstream media.” Same for every election since. They said Clinton would beat George Bush elder handily; Clinton received only 43 per cent of the vote. Gore was supposed to win. Kerry was supposed to win. These polls are probably wrong, too.

Second, Barry should be WAY, WAY ahead, based on the economy. But the economy issue cuts two ways. Barry has no experience. McCain is not an incumbent. McCain has experience. The Dems, Barry’s party, control the budget. They have been in control the past two years and performed no oversight of Fannie and Freddie. This message is getting through.

Three, people are SCARED. Will they lay their economic future and the security of themselves, their loved ones and their country (which are intertwined) in the hands of an empty suit or on an old war hero? I think the latter.

With those preliminary observations, consider the following:

Twenty per cent of Hillary voters have said they will vote for McCain. Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild is mobilizing them. As are others. Even if the number is just five per cent, that is significant.

Sarah Palin has super-energized the silent soccer/hockey mom constituency. These women will vote in numbers much larger than in the past. Biden got next to zero votes in the primaries and has been a gaffe-a-day on the campaign trail.

In addition, there are “security moms,” those of both parties who fear for the security of this country. They will vote for McCain.

Obama is not just pro-abortion, he his pro-infanticide. The abortion foes will not vote for him.

Evangelical Christians, generally, will not vote for Obama.

Barry is anti-gun. No politically astute gun owner will vote for him. It was the gun owners who caused the 1994 Republican Revolution that swept the Republicans into power after Clinton’s so-called “Assault Weapons” ban.

When McCain starts talking about the President’s power to appoint federal judges, “moderate” fence-sitters will trend heavily for McCain.

People who want gas prices to go down will vote for McCain. McCain & Palin have embraced “Drill, Baby, Drill” and an “all of the above” approach to creating energy supplies.

Pro-military people (also known as “patriots”) will vote for McCain.

McCain will appeal to moderates who like to see bi-partisanship; Barry has voted only with his party and has never bucked his party.

Barry wants to increase spending in an economic crisis, McCain wants to institute an across the board spending freeze. McCain will appeal to most people who have common sense.

Barry wants to increase taxes on small businesses and the so-called wealthy and corporations who create jobs, McCain does not want to impose such job-killing taxes. McCain will appeal to most people who have common sense.

Barry’s past is full of leftist/terrorist/Muslim associations. McCain’s is that of a war hero.

Barry’s past is full of crazy preachers. McCain’s is not.

Barry is tied up with corrupt Chicago politicians. McCain is not.

Barry suddenly could afford a mansion in Chicago, helped out by a convicted felon. McCain has no such record. McCain has no reason to be tempted by money – his wife is independently wealthy.

Barry has never served his country; McCain is a “Top Gun” Navy fighter-bomber pilot, the best-of-the-best. He has the “right stuff.”

Barry has over $850 million in earmarks, including some that benefitted his wife’s employer and other political cronies. McCain has never voted for an earmark.

Barry has no legislative accomplishments. McCain has many.

Barry has a record of “going along to get along.” McCain has a record as a maverick who bucks his party.

I hate to say it, but Obama is black, McCain is white. Most whites, who overwhelming outnumber blacks, will vote for McCain. That’s just the way it is.

Bottom line: this is McCain’s election to lose. As long as he remains the “steady, firm hand on the tiller during the storm” kind of guy, and keeps Barry having to explain his past and his non-existent policies, he will win.

If McCain does not win, our country is no longer something I’m familiar with. Switzerland will beckon.