[Marxism] The night before

[Joaquin Bustelo]

My read the night before:

There is such a flood of polls and spin, it is difficult to make heads or
tails of it. But my impressionistic read of the data is that Obama appears
headed for a very substantial victory, perhaps even bigger than the most
lopsided polls predict.

In the latest polls, all calculated on a "Likely Voter" basis,  Obama's lead
varies from 5% to 11%, with most in the lower half of this range. The CNN
Poll of Polls, an average of a half dozen or so surveys, gives Obama a 7%
advantage, and the realclearpolitics.com RCP average, which includes a
larger number of surveys, in the case of tonight's figures, 14, a 7.3% lead.

The advantage of an average of various polls is that in theory you reduce
sampling error: some are a little low, some a little high, and chances are,
they cancel each other out. The DISadvantage is that tonight's "poll of
polls" or "average" isn't really comparable with last night's or even this
morning's, because the polls included in each successive edition of these
averages aren't the same. The "likely voter" models lead to different
results as well as how hard a given polling group presses those who
initially say they're undecided to reveal which way they're leaning. 

The only poll that has Obama's lead above 10% is Gallup's final tracking
poll, which gives him an 11% lead in both its traditional and expanded
likely voter models, and 13% among all registered voters. Obama's numbers in
the Gallup survey have been surging in the final days of the campaign.

Rasmussen, another large tracking poll also shows Obama increasing his
support, as do various other polls when compared to the numbers the same
poll reported only days ago. Quite notable is the Fox News poll, which had
Obama at +3% in the middle of last week but reported him at +7% based on
weekend polling. 

The great unknown are the undecided voters, and the few percent of each
side's voters who say they still might change their mind. In recent election
years, 10-15% of the voters have said on exit polls that they made up their
minds only in the last couple of days before the elections or on election
day itself. 

Sometimes these voters divide pretty much the same as the rest of the
electorate; at other times, they tilt heavily to one side or the other.
There is, quite simply, not much reliable data on who these people may be.
The best hints come from Gallup's weekly demographic roundup based on its
very large (1000 person a night) exit poll. 

Based on this data, three groups stand out among the undecided: "pure
independents," older voters and Latinos. Who the Gallup poll considers to be
"Pure independents" is something of a mystery. About a third of voters
normally describe themselves as independents, but that would suggest a
sample size of about 2,000 in the weekly demographic roundup and therefore a
small margin of error. But Obama and McCain's "pure independent" numbers
bounce around so much it suggests the actual sample is perhaps 200, or 3% of
the electorate. In the last month, Obama's number have ranged from 24% to
34%; McCain's from 25% to 34%. Depending on the week, 35%-45% of this group
is undecided. 

The older voters are not good news for Obama. Those 64 and over are the only
age group where Obama now trails McCain, and moreover, this after being tied
or only one point apart for several weeks. If the exit polls confirm this
trend, as I think likely, what happened is simply that voting for Obama
proved to be too much for older white voters who came of age in the 50's or
earlier, when Jim Crow still reigned supreme and the only black face you
could see on TV was in a baseball game or perhaps on the product label for
Aunt Jemima pancake syrup. It's not a question of conscious racists --all
those have been solidly against Obama all along-- but unconscious prejudices
and value judgments. It is also true they may identify more with the
septuagenarian McCain than with forty-something Obama. 

But turning to Latinos, the news is decidedly different. 

There is a clear trend, with Latino support for Obama increasing over the
past month, from 60, to 61, to 65 to 74 in the final week of polling.
McCain's trend has been 31, 29, 27 and 20. This last week's change is so
dramatic one wonders whether this is a statistical fluke. But if one
discounts part of the jump as being due to that, the increase is so big, and
backed by an established rising Obama trend, that it is almost certainly
true that uncommitted Latinos "breaking" for Obama, and previous McCain
supporters switching, is a big part in the endgame of this campaign.

Corroborating evidence comes from state polls with large Latino voting
populations. States like Colorado have been moving into the Obama columns in
many projections, while in some, Arizona has moved from McCain to toss-up.
And this is the kind of trend that would be missed in many or most national
polls of the 600-1200 people range. Typically, these are done in English
only, which pollsters with greater cultural sensitivity have found is not
the preferred language of half of all Latino household responders, and often
is not an accessible language at all. Gallup, like Pew, conducts surveys in
English and Spanish. The significance of this is that in last year's
congressional election, the Latino shift to supporting Democrats was most
pronounced among those who said in the exit poll they were born abroad,
i.e., precisely those who are Spanish dominant.

A big factor in this shift against McCain is the immigration issue. Most
Anglos imagine it has gone entirely unmentioned in the campaign. Not true.
In the campaign in Spanish, immigration has been a prominent issue, and here
McCain has been hurt badly by his retreat away from a comprehensive
immigration reform that would claim to legalize many of the undocumented to
the "enforcement first" nativist stand of the right wing of his party. On
Saturday, while Anglos were watching McCain clowning on Saturday Night Live,
Latinos were watching both McCain and Obama on "Sabado Gigante," an
execrable show reminiscent of the worst of television from the 1960's. But
the last hour of the show was dedicated to interviews with the two
candidates. And although very respectfully and non-confrontationally, "Don
Francisco," the show's host, drew out McCain's current (real) position on
the issue, and also gave Obama the time he needed to nail McCain on it.

It is true that those who can vote are citizens and have no immigration
problems themselves. But they have brothers, sisters, friends, lovers,
spouses and neighbors who are vulnerable to the sharp increase in raids by
la migra. Even the Cuban community, which as a whole has no immigration
problems due to a special anticommunist immigration law from the 1960's that
applies only to Cubans, is sharply against the nativist Republican jihad.

Ironically, even the leak about Obama's aunt being undocumented may have
played to Obama's favor in the community, increasing the perception that he
is more likely to be in touch with people like us.

Intimately intertwined with this issue is the economy. Latino communities
across the United States have been in a sharp recession for more than a year
due to the collapse of the housing bubble and with it construction work. A
Pew survey showing a sharp decline in incomes for households headed by
immigrants confirms this. Obama's populist rhetoric is much more in tune
with the community's real situation than McCain's stunts and free market
preaching. 

So I think, yes, there is a real surge towards Obama among Latinos as the
campaign closes.

But I believe there is also a surge among Blacks. You may think, with
numbers like 3, 4 and 5% for McCain on the Gallup demographics among Blacks,
how could Obama surge? And I would say, the surge is in the turnout.

Virtually all my friends and coworkers who have gone to vote early are
talking about the massive, crushing Black turnout in Georgia. Some have
moving stories, one, of a Black man who appeared to be in his 60's who was
accompanied by a white woman to act as his aid because he couldn't read and
it was his first time voting. Some of these stories have made it into the
media, like that of 106-year-old Atlanta resident Ann Nixon Cooper, who was
unable to vote because she was Black before she reached retirement age and
told reporters she had no time for dying because she had to see a Black man
become president. News reports from the Carolinas, Florida and other states
report the same thing. The usual pattern in early voting is a trickle that
slowly builds up. This year it was like opening the sluice gates at the
bottom of an overfilled dam -- a torrent of voters that just wouldn't stop.
Black voters. 

Some speculate this massive tide of Black voters was just a time shift, from
voting on election day to voting early. I believe, on the contrary, it is
just a reflection of the massive determination that is absolutely pervasive
in the Black community to put Obama in the White House, and which will lead
to an extraordinary Black turnout. I would be very surprised if the vote
counts did not show that the pre-election polls in states like Georgia and
North Carolina did not significantly understate Obama's results, just as the
pre-primary polls did, and basically for the same reason: the polls are
weighted to reflect Black turnout in previous elections, and this year it
will be much greater.

On the other side, I see little sign of enthusiasm in the McCain campaign.
By and large their key supporters, activists and workers all see the writing
on the wall. They might have been competitive, but a financial panic that
broke out just at the worst possible time, with less than two months to go
before the voting, did them in. By their own admission the economy was their
weakest point, and circumstances conspired to make it not just the central
issue, but a dramatic, overriding one.

Also, a Democrat finally had the guts to break with the "public financing"
charade. In elections past, "both" parties would agree to public financing
and its spending limits, and then Republicans would rake in "soft" money by
the truckload for convention organizing, the senate and house campaign
committees, the party's national committee, supposedly "unaffiliated" groups
like the notorious Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, etc. etc. etc.

The Democrats, who did not have quite as much access to corporate and fat
cat largesse as the Republicans, would find the public financing funds too
limited to effectively counter the multisided onslaught, and especially
because responding to attacks like the Swift Boat Veterans smear, by its
nature, HAS to be closely coordinated with the campaign and the candidate.
An "independent" group can launch the smear, but it is the candidate and the
centralized campaign that has to respond.

It was McCain's bad fortune that Obama decided to forego public financing,
and the spending limits it brings, precisely in a year when even among Wall
Street flunkeys and even many in ruling class circles, the sheer, massive
incompetence, corruption and irresponsibility of the outgoing Republican
administration had people fleeing to the Democrats for relief. And that
Obama was such a gifted candidate he inspired contributions not from
hundreds of thousands of people, but millions.

And those same gifts allowed Obama to reap hundreds of millions of dollars
or more in the form of the unpaid labor time of tens of thousands of
volunteers throughout the country.

Talking about this today to a highly respected political analyst, one of the
professor types (some) networks trot out on election nights to put a
high-brow gloss on what is otherwise an exercise in glitzy graphics at the
service of very pedestrian grade school arithmetic, the professor asked a
very revealing question: how big would Obama's lead be if he had been a
white man with similar extraordinary political gifts, both to inspire people
and to pull together a campaign team and keep it focused and on message? His
estimate was that it would be one of the great landslides you get from time
to time in U.S. politics, like Johnson versus Goldwater, or Nixon against
McGovern, or at least Reagan's re-election trouncing or Mondale in 1984, or
to translate, a 20% difference in the popular vote, give or take a few
percent.

I can't imagine how Obama could get anywhere near there, but I think he
could do half that, 10% over McCain. Perhaps the undecided geezer vote will
take him lower -- there are a lot more of them than there are Latinos who
are allowed to vote -- but for now I'll stick with predicting Obama will win
with a 10% lead in the popular vote, +/- 2%. 

As for the Electoral College, I expect something in the 350-375 range.

"Down ticket" -- the Congress -- what everyone will focus on is whether the
Democrats can get to the magic 60-seat majority in the Senate that
supposedly would allow them to ride roughshod over the Republicans by being
able to win a cloture vote (i.e., end debate and bring a measure to a vote)
on a straight party-line division in the Senate. This is pure fantasy, not
because the Democrats won't get 60 Senators (unlikely, but they might) but
because party legislative caucuses in the United States never --or only very
rarely and exceptionally-- have that kind of cohesion. 

If my various hunches and guesses are right, the presidential outcome will
be suggested by the very first exit polls we see from states like Georgia,
and with a high degree of certainty after the 9:00 PM poll closing, although
the formal "call" may have to wait for California, whose polls close at 11
(all times Eastern). During those hours waiting for California to finish and
for enough votes to come in from California to verify the exit poll figures
and formally call it there, expect all kinds of nonsense about "Key House"
and "Key Senate" races during the down time. 

My prediction for the Senate? I don't have one in numbers, just that the new
one is likely to be as bad or worse than the one that came before.

Joaquin