A mere month and a half ago Florida looked like it would be a strong McCain state. However, Obama has been steadily chipping away at McCain’s lead to the point where it is now pretty much a toss-up state. Of course, McCain must win Florida if he hopes to have any chance at the White House. The good news here is that according to the early voting polling, McCain seems to have an surprising edge. The conventional wisdom had been that (and the evidence seems to support this) early voting favors Democrats and Sen. Obama. Indeed, Obama has been encouraging his supporters to get out and vote early (and often). According to a recent LA Times poll about 54% of the respondents who had already voted were Democrats; and about 30% of the 1.4 million votes cast in Florida already are Republicans. This seems to indicate a substantial lead for Obama in the Sunshine State. However, surprise! According to the same poll, McCain is currently enjoying a 49-45 lead over Sen. Obama, despite a near 15 point deficit in party ID.
What would be the cause of such a surprising result? First, one of the most likely explanations is that Independents are breaking for McCain in a big way. Some estimates by people who really follow these polls is that McCain could see Independents break for him by as much as 60-40. Dick Morris writes that if Obama doesn’t finish above 50% in the final polls, he is toast because Independents are taking a second and third look at Obama and are just uneasy with him right now.
Another factor that could be contributing to this is that Florida has a very large Jewish population. Traditionally the Jewish vote tends to favor the Democrat candidate. This year, because of McCain’s moderate stances and uncertainty about how strong Obama’s commitment to Israel is, the Jewish vote is expected to be much closer. In fact, absentee votes that have been cast from Israeli-American citizens have gone to McCain at a 3-1 clip. This would help McCain in states like Ohio, which also have a rather large Jewish population.
Finally, we are probably seeing some kind of PUMA effect as well. The good folks over at Hillbuzz (former campaign workers for Hillary) think there will be a very large PUMA effect. I think this will be another key number to watch. If Obama only gets 80-85% of the Democrat vote because of the PUMA effect (maybe combined with some kind of Bradley effect), and McCain gets 90% of the GOP vote, McCain probably winds up winning this thing going away.
The main thing to take away from this story is that this campaign is very very close. The theory that nearly every single poll is working off of is that the youth and African American vote is going to turn out huge margin for Obama and give him the White House (ask President’s Kerry and McGovern how that worked out for them). The problem is, the early voting in nearly all states that have it just have not born this out. In fact, the early voting seems to be about on par for 2004. If this holds true through Tuesday, these +7-14 Democrat turnout models that the polls are using this year are going to look ridiculously wrong. Don’t buy into the MSM’s spin, this election is going to be very close, so be sure to vote and go volunteer!
October 31st, 2008 at 6:15 am
Very interesting news. Wonder how many of those voters are from the Panhandle which has conservative Democrat voters much like West Viriginia. Surprising date in Floriday. Thanks for the article.
October 31st, 2008 at 8:16 am
Expect Obama supporters to start talking about how inaccurate and easily biased polls are NOW that they favor McCain.
October 31st, 2008 at 1:15 pm
I think you are wrong. Where did you get your info from? No where do they release voting info until the poll closes. This applies to early voting and absentee ballots. You are just lying to yourself.
October 31st, 2008 at 1:19 pm
The info is from the Los Angeles Times, which has endorsed Obama. They released the info, if you follow the links you can see for yourself.
October 31st, 2008 at 1:24 pm
Howard, just click on those blue things, they are called links.
October 31st, 2008 at 9:25 pm
[...] 99.98% that Obama wins McCain Lead In Early Voting Surprise By Bryan McAffee A mere month and a half ago Florida looked like it would be a strong McCain [...]
November 1st, 2008 at 7:58 am
Problem is the article linked does not say what you think it says
November 1st, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Something about hte jewish vote needs to be made clear. I am a jew and I have lived in Israel, but the jewish vote is far from monolithic. You have secular jews, reformist jews, orthodox jews and ultra orthodox jews. THose groups can also be divided into sephardic jews( arabic jews from morocco, the rest of africa and spain) and ashkenazi jews( russians, polish etc etc) In the states, canada , France, England, argentina , most of eastern europe and the rest of the diaspora, jews are left leaning. As past elections have shown and as data for this election shows, usually jews vote anywhere from 65-80 percent for left leaning candidates. even in Israel (where an election is coming up) parties like Kadima, Labor among other lesser known parties are more left leaning and have far more membership numbers then likud, shas etc etc. Our religion as well is not as conservative as some might think. We have female rabbis and even the conservative auhotority in the states have decided to allow individual temples the right to decide whether to hold gay marriages. Also jews do not believe in pushing others to convert and for most Jews… simply marrying into a jewish family brings you into the wide umbrella of people that are considered jewish. If you read the Torah we are quite a liberal religion. As For the absentee ballots coming from Israel, remember that most americans living in israel are members of the ultra orthodox living in yehisva settlements in the West Bank. These peopel are notoriously right wing especially since they believe in an Israel that spreads from the Egyptian borders to the Syrian borders. In places such as Illinois, California, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and Florida there are two segments to Jewish society, the older more zionist jews who are more conservative for the most part considering that many of them fought with teh Irgun and later IDF in defence of Israeli territory early on ( prio to 1967 borders), these groups area also made up more so of ashkenazi jews) and you have the other side which makes up the 60-80% of more liberal leaning jews which believe that events such as the holocaust as well as thier fight alongside black people for civil rights and continued struggle against anti-semitism ( whihc is more rampant among conservative christian groups) bring about a more left leaning open political belief. Sephardic jews otherwise known as north african jews or arabic jews are more left leaning because thye have suffered discrimination within Israel until the late 1980s much like the blacks did. They also have alot in common with arabic and muslim communities which lived side by side in peace until today ( certain areas in morocco, turkey, algeria still have good jewish-arab relations) IF you look up Jewish PAC groups in the states, the conservatives tend to go only with APAC ( which represent about 30% of American jews, but also spied on the states, stole nuclear secrets and also stole iraqi war plans to pass on to the israeli governement( that diplomat is currently in jail) and the Jewish Defence League( whose leader committed suicide in a los angeles jail while awaiting for trial on charges of terrorism( they were going to blow up several mosques and kill some local muslim representatives) while the democrats focus more on the left leaning Jewish PACs as well as Jewish charities run by many notables which cover more of the majority. At the end just like other elections, according to my calculations I see Obama winning at the very least 60% of the Jewish vote with Mccain winning at the MOSt 40%. This goes right along the historical trends of the past.
November 9th, 2008 at 8:59 am
Hehe. I love going back and seeing the PUMA folks hustle you all. The PUMA movement was an obvious fraud. Hillary voters are mostly Democrats who, surprise, surprise, voted for the Democratic candidate.
November 9th, 2008 at 9:55 am
Gee, why am I surprised some little liberal looser is taking time to come gloat? The fact is, it is estimated that about 18% of former Hillary supporters did vote for McCain. If the base of the party had bothered to show up, that would have made a big difference, but its all a moot point.
I will say this, I am re-registering as an Independent so I can vote in the Democrat primary in the future. I’d like to screw you guys over just like you screwed us over with McCain.