Presidential Poll Quickie: Oct. 9, 2008

I have an irrational love of numbers. The only numbers people interested in politics get to obsess over without reservations are polls. So here’s a brief summary of the latest national presidential election polls and polls in states that John McCain and Barack Obama appear to think are in play.

Although the October 7, 2008 presidential debate between Republican presidential candidate John McCain and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was widely seen as essentially a draw — which would benefit the front runner, Obama, but not affect climbs or falls in the numbers — there has been some movement in the polls since that debate.

National polls have seen McCain slowly and so far not significantly gaining on Obama. While a Gallup poll still has Obama leading by 11 percentage points with 52% over McCain’s 41%, a Rasmussen poll has Obama at 50% over McCain’s 45%, a Hotline/FD poll has Obama at 47% over McCain’s 41%, a Reuters/C-Span/Zogby poll has Obama at 48% to McCain’s 44%, and a GW/Battleground poll has Obama at 48% to McCain’s 45%. Obama’s numbers are generally down two or three percentage points from polls earlier this week, but they are outside the statistical margin of error.

In projections for the electoral college that average-in trends over several different recent polls, Obama is now projected to win 349 electoral votes over McCain’s 174, with North Carolina’s 15 electoral votes considered a toss-up. A candidate needs 270 electoral college votes to win the presidential election.

The battleground states of the moment are Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Ohio, Missouri, Nevada, and North Carolina, which add up to a total of 98 electoral votes — enough to nearly swing the election one way or the other, although McCain would have to pick up all these states and 9 more electoral votes from elsewhere to win, since Indiana’s 11 electoral votes are currently credited to his 174. If McCain manages to hold on to all his current electoral votes, he would be most likely to pick those remaining 9 votes up in Michigan, New Mexico, or Virginia, which all currently poll for Obama at an average of 6% each.

Here are the developments in those battlground states:

Colorado (9 electoral votes) had been called a tie by the Denver Post earlier last week, with projections that it might return to its old habit of leaning GOP after generally favoring Obama following the Democratic National Convention in Denver. A recent Fox News/Rasmussen poll and an InAdv/Poll Position poll, however, have both put the mood there at 51% Obama over McCain’s 45%.

Florida (27 electoral votes) has been leaning slightly Obama recently, but the state is certainly still very much contested. The Republican-leaning Florida Chamber of Commerce has polled McCain at 45% to Obama’s 42%.  A non-partisan Mason/Dixon poll has Obama at 48% to McCain’s 46%, and a Rasmussen poll has Obama at 50% to McCain’s 47%.

Indiana (11 electoral votes) was called a tie by a Research 2000 poll earlier last week, but a more recent CNN/Time poll has McCain leading Obama 51% to 46%, and an even more recent Rasmussen poll has McCain even farther ahead, at 50% to Obama’s 43%.

Ohio (20 electoral votes) remains hotly contested, although it is currently leaning slightly towards Obama, who has lost a few percentage points in that crucial swing state. Earlier in the week, an ABC News/Washington Post poll and a poll by the Democratic-leaning PPP had both predicted Obama 6% ahead, at 51% to McCain’s 45% and 49% to McCain’s 43% respectively. Then, a later Fox News/Rasmussen poll had predicted McCain taking the lead at 48% to Obama’s 47%, only to have the most current polls by CNN/Time and ARG once again put Obama in the lead at 50% to 47% and 48% to 45% respectively. A three percent lead is close to the margin of error, so Ohio is essentially undecided.

Michigan (17 electoral votes) recently saw McCain pull his ad funding as the state seemed to slip further and further into the Obama camp, but Michigan will remain one of the states that McCain will have to pursue if he wants to retain a chance of winning. The numbers, however, are not at all good for McCain. The Democratic-leaning PPP’s recent poll has predicted a 51% to 41% lead for Obama, and, more significantly, the conservative-leaning Rasmussen has Obama ahead 56% to McCain’s 50%. This follows a tie two weeks ago.

Missouri (11 electoral votes) had Obama take the lead polls earlier in the week by CNN/Time (49% to McCain’s 48%) and by Fox News/Rasmussen (50% to McCain’s 47%), but the most recent poll by ARG puts McCain ahead once again at 49% to Obama’s 46%. Missouri may be the state currently credited to Obama’s electoral votes by long-term tendency that McCain needs to secure in order to have a chance to win.

Nevada (5 electoral votes), once a McCain state, has seen Obama’s consistent lead waver in magnitude over the last few polls, bouncing from 4 points (Rasmussen) up to 7 points (Reno Gazette-Journal) and back down to 2 points (InAdv/PollPosition). The state is certainly still in play.

New Mexico (5 electoral votes), where McCain had hoped to benefit from his popularity in neighboring Arizona and his hard-line talk on illegal immigration, still has Obama ahead by 5% each in recent Rasmussen and Albuquerque Journal polls.

North Carolina (15 electoral votes) is the most hotly contested state, with the Charlotte area polling heavily for Obama and the rest of the state leaning towards McCain. Unlike Obama’s native Illinois, where Chicago’s high Democratic numbers among blue collar workers and African Americans regularly overrule the rest of the state’s steady Republican base, Charlotte is not large enough (yet) to do the same in North Carolina. The polls there have been all over the place this week. The Democratic-leaning PPP put Obama at 50% over McCain’s 44%. CNN/Time called the state at tie at 49% each. SurveyUSA put McCain at 49% and Obama at 46%. The Republican-leaning Civitas/TelOpinion polled Obama at 48% and McCain at 43%. Rasmussen puts Obama at 49% over McCain’s 48%. The state is an important prize for the McCain campaign, so look for a lot of campainging there in the coming weeks, with plenty of appeals to the Southern conservative base by Sarah Palin.

Virginia (13 electoral votes) has traditionally been a GOP state and is one where McCain still has some chance of success, albeit the current polls by Suffolk (12%), SurveyUSA (10%), Fox News/Rasmussen (2%), and the Democratic-leaning PPP (8%) all put Obama fairly comfortably in the lead, if less so since the last presidential debate.

The McCain campaign will also need to keep an eye on states where McCain only leads by an average of 6% or less in the polls. Currently the only state in that category is West Virginia (5 electoral votes).

Presidential Poll Quickie: Sep. 28, 2008

I have an irrational love of numbers. The only numbers people interested in politics get to obsess over without reservations are polls. So here’s a brief summary of the latest national presidential election polls and polls in states that John McCain and Barack Obama appear to think are in play.

Recent national polls appear to more clearly favor Barack Obama over John McCain that has previously been the case. A Gallup poll has Obama ahead at 50% to McCain’s 42%, a Rasmussen poll has Barack Obama ahead at 50% to McCain’s 44%, and a Hotline/FD poll has Obama ahead at 47% to McCain’s 42%.

Current electoral vote totals put Barack Obama at 286 electoral votes and John McCain at 252 electoral votes, a gain by Obama of 13 electoral votes over last week.

In Florida, John McCain continues to hold on to the slightest of leads over Barack Obama, at 48% to Obama’s 47%.

Iowa appears to have gone from a battle ground state to solidly for Barack Obama, with all more recent polls putting Obama ahead of McCain in that state, and the most current Iowa poll putting Obama at 51% to McCain’s 43%.

Michigan no longer appears to be a battle ground state. The newest poll there puts Barack Obama 13% ahead of John McCain, at 51% to 38%.

Missouri appears to edging towards a toss-up, with John McCain’s lead over Barack Obama there melting to 48% to 46% in one poll and to 47% to 46% in another poll.

In hotly contested Nevada, John McCain holds on to a slim lead of 46% over Barack Obama’s 45% in the most recent poll.

After John McCain pulled ahead in New Hampshire earlier in the week by two points, four successive polls have shown Obama in the lead, with the most recent one putting Obama at 48% and McCain at 44%.

In the usually solidly Republican North Carolina, Barack Obama now leads John McCain at 49% to 47%, according to the latest poll, following two polls that had tied the two candidates at 45% each and at 46% each.

John McCain seems to be currently ahead in Ohio, which has been back and forth frequently. A poll earlier last week had reduced Obama’s lead to a tie at 46% to 46%, and the newest poll gives McCain a slight lead at 47% to Obama’s 46%. Unless something drastic happens, Ohio will, as usual, add suspense to the presidential election until election night and make its 20 electoral votes a deciding factor.

Barack Obama continues to hold on to his lead in Pennsylvania, with 47% to John McCain’s 43% in the most current poll and 49% to 45% in one the day before.

Virginia, which has voted Republican since the end of the Dixiecrats, now appears to have tilted in Obama’s favor at 50% over McCain’s 45%. The polls in Virginia have been going back and forth frequently, so nothing is settled yet — it looks like this state might be one of the ones to watch election night. Virginia has 13 electoral votes.

After only showing a one-point lead in the Big Ten Battleground poll two weeks ago in Wisconsin, Barack Obama is now once again clearly in the lead in that state, at 49% to John McCain’s 43%.

Why Russia’s New Foreign Policy Is A Real Threat

Russia is back.

Not twenty years after the rest of the world breathed a sigh of relief at the collapse of the totalitarian Soviet Empire and at the end of the Russian dictatorship of world affairs, Russian tanks once again rolled into free countries on Russia’s borders, Russian soldiers once more are formally being accused of ethnically cleansing the villages of those who dare resist them, and Russian diplomats once again blame it all not on their own belligerence, but on the old propaganda staple, American Imperialism – that is, the threat of a reign of freedom and democracy on their borders, much like the East Germans tried in 1953, the Hungarians tried in 1956, and the Czechs tried in 1968, just to equally be crushed by soldiers and tanks for failing to see that Moscow knows best.

It all seems so familiar that it’s almost refreshing. What is less refreshing is the reaction from the two presidential candidates.

Of course, Barack Obama and John McCain both condemned the Russian attack on Georgia. McCain warned Americans that Russia was entering a new, aggressive phase in its foreign policy. He said the West should “have no doubt about Russian ambitions in this area,” and that the Russians wanted “to send a signal to any country that chooses to associate with the West” to think twice about doing so. The West, he said, must react. Obama went even further and declared, “Now is the time for action – not just words.”

But both candidates have been remarkably vague about just what those reactions should be. The most forceful ones that either one seems to have been able to come up with so far has been the largely symbolic dismissal of Russia from the G8 and the naïvely patronizing gesture of sending aid packages to the defeated ally, Georgian. That is hardly enough from the future leader of the Free World.

This failure of leadership suggests that neither of has understood the gravity Russia’s actions, which Stephen Blank of the U.S. Army War College described as a combination of “drunken Russian soldiers looting the population, false claims about Georgian genocide and war crimes that may yet be counterbalanced by truer accounts of bad Russian behavior – beyond that, Russia is threatening everyone in sight to show that it is a great power even if they send humanitarian aid to Georgia. In other words, the Russian line is one of mendacity, provocation, aggression, belligerence, and undisciplined raiding.”

What we saw in Georgia is not the first gambit in a new round of geopolitical chess the Russians intend to play with the West. Those came earlier, when the Russians cut off the natural gas supply to the Western-oriented Ukraine and launched a concerted cyber-attack against Estonia, a member of both NATO and the EU. The move in Georgia is just the first one the West really noticed, because tanks rolled.

The Russian government insists that its military just happened to be hanging around the border with peace on its mind when the Georgians suddenly attacked hapless South Ossetian separatists. The Russians didn’t plan to crush the Georgians with such an impressive use of force, they say. Their army really just is that good and that quick.

This is a lie, and it’s part of the game the Russians are playing.

Far from being spontaneous, the Russian invasion had long been planned. Russian officials issued Russian passports to South Ossetians well in advance so that they could claim to be rushing to the defense of their own citizens when the Georgian forces entered the breakaway region. Russia had steadily increased its troops on the border to Georgia for months before the conflict, Russian anti-aircraft missiles had shot down unmanned Georgian drones over Georgian territory, and Russian military jets had repeatedly violated Georgian airspace – all actions intended to eventually provoke a reaction from Georgia. The Georgian defeat, too, was a foregone conclusion. Russia had intended all along to humiliate a U.S. ally and show everyone that nothing would stop a Russian invasion.

Russian president Dmitri Medvedev announced soon afterwards that all countries on its borders from now on were to consider themselves in the Russian sphere of influence – including European Union members Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. The same applied, so Medvedev, to Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, which Europe had turned to in order to alleviate its oil and gas dependency on an increasingly sinister Russia. A week later, Medvedev’s bluster at the presence of U.S. warships in the Black Sea that were delivering humanitarian aid to Georgia further suggested that Russia now considers the entire Black Sea region its thralldom, including the pro-Western Ukraine with its strategic ports.

In fact, the next Russian moves are already laid out in plain sight, and the Ukraine is indeed their target. The Ukrainian president, Viktor Yushchenko, who survived a poisoning attempt that many ascribe to Russian agents, recently refused to extend the Soviet-era lease of the Crimean port of Sevastopol to the Russian Black Sea fleet after the lease expires in 2017. In response, Russian politicians questioned the integrity of the Ukraine’s borders, and the vocal Russian minority in Sevastopol staged demonstrations demanding the Crimea’s independence. How long before those demonstrations turn into calculated riots? How long until the Russian government claims that Ukrainian police are no longer restoring order, but harming Russian citizens? How long before Russia sends its troops to occupy the Crimea in response to another crisis Russia provoked?

Something very similar is already going on along the Ukraine’s western border, in the Transdnerstr region of neighboring Moldova. There, the Kremlin has stoked a pro-Russian separatist movement for years. Much like the South Ossetians, those separatists have declared they want to be part of Russia – except that they share no borders with it. How long until Russian “peace keepers” arrive there as well, forming a wedge between Moldova and the Ukraine, and coming ominously close to the Ukrainian port of Odessa?

And there is still more. A European-backed oil pipeline that was just recently modernized ends in the Georgian port of Supsa, just 15 miles from where Russian soldiers still occupy the port of Poti. The country where most of that oil comes from, Kazakhstan, has a Russian minority that makes up nearly a third of its population. How long until the Kremlin arranges a repeat of Georgia there?

Russian president Medvedev and Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin have made clear how deeply many Russian leaders still resent their country’s realistic place in world affairs – the place of a distinctly secondary power. Putin has famously called this decline “the greatest geopolitical disaster of the century;” those millions who after 1989 finally breathed free from Russian jingoism and oppression might disagree. In order to make up for that resentment, Russia’s current government seems resolved to pretend at its former dark might by killing and by stealing from its smaller neighbors and by then loudly demanding respect from the rest of the world that Russia has made no effort to earn.

It is the responsibility of the presidential candidates to make clear now to the Russian government that any future U.S. administration will take concrete and serious actions against a Russia that gambles with the security of entire continents in a misled search for a dead imperial nightmare buried somewhere in the dregs of its largely derelict and rotting army, its current farce of a democracy, and its apparent determination to wear out its welcome in an international community that in the 21st century expects more civilized behavior from a country that wants to be taken seriously.

Moreover, instead of remaining vague, the candidates should not only promise to step up efforts to integrate the Ukraine into NATO as the current administration has started to do, but should also start calling Russia’s bluffs by using Russia’s own logic. If Russia is going to demand the independence of every disgruntled minority in the Caucasus, it will have to do the same with its own minorities yearning to be free – in Chechnya, in Dagestan, in Tatarstan, along the Volga, and in the Siberian provinces.

As to spheres of influence wherever Russia has an adjoining border and anywhere the Russian empire once stretched – it is to be doubted that the Russians would want Germany to suddenly reclaim the Königsberg exclave in the Baltic, which is now safely tucked far into EU territory and nowhere borders on Russia; or that it would accept Japanese claims over the Kuril Islands because those were once part of the Japanese Empire; or that it would do anything but throw a fit if its recently planted flag were uprooted from the seabed at the North Pole when the international commission working on the question confirms that the Pole is indeed part of Greenland and not Russia.

And in any case, even in what it calls its “near abroad” the Russian sphere of influence is a still a myth the Free World can dispel: Last week, a council of former Soviet republics refused to follow Russia’s lead and voted not to recognize the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Those countries still trust 21st century values of freedom and democracy more than they fear the 19th century Russian yawp.

Let’s hear from our presidential candidates how they will keep it that way.