How McCain could still win

So, a new article at Salon i confident because McCain could still win. Here's why...

Salon has a new article up where its author (a republican) argues that unless Obama is above 50% in a state, he will likely not win that state. He contends that undecideds will break for McCain, not Obama:

There's an old rule in politics that an incumbent candidate is always in danger when he dips under 50 percent, even if he is leading his opponent in the polls. It's all about the undecideds. In a race with an incumbent candidate and a challenger, on Election Day the undecideds tend to break for the challenger, at rates as high as 4 to 1. If an incumbent is polling at, say, 47 to 45 percent with 8 percent undecided, there's a good chance he's going to wind up losing 49 to 51. As it's sometimes expressed, if you're an incumbent, what you see is what you get.

The same pattern seems to be true for African-American candidates in much of the country. If you're a black candidate running against a white candidate, what you see is what you get. And it doesn't matter whether you're an incumbent or a challenger. If you're not polling above 50 percent, you should be worried. As of this writing, Barack Obama is not polling consistently above 50 percent in a number of electoral-vote-rich swing states, including Ohio and Florida. He should be worried.

...

As you look at the polling data in the homestretch of this election, pay close attention whenever you see any numbers, be they statewide or national, where Sen. Obama is below 50 percent. So long as there are more than a handful of voters describing themselves as undecided, I will maintain that Sen. McCain is very much in the race. Even if Sen. Obama were to open a larger lead, my basis for analyzing things would remain the same. Are there enough undecided voters in crucial states to bridge whatever gap exists in the head-to-head? If so, don't be shocked if on Election Day, Sen. McCain is your winner.

As of right now, if I take that argument as true and start plugging in the numbers from the RCP state polling averages as of today, I get:

Obama 286 EV
McCain 252 EV

Obama wins: VA, CO, NM, MN, IA, NH, PA
McCain wins just about every other battleground: FL, OH, IN, NC, GA, NV

If McCain flips PA - which, remember has NO early voting, then he wins the election. This could explain why McCain is spending so much time this week in PA and Obama is going there on tuesday.

If McCain can't flip PA, then he can try and flip VA and NH for the win.

Looking at Nate Silver's averages over at 538.com makes it even scarier:

Obama is < 50 % in CO, VA and NH So, using 538's averages, McCain wins 278 EV to 260 EV Cross-Posted at Late Night Pundit

I am not a concern troll. Let me make some points below:

First, read the Salon article. Yes the guy is a republican. Maybe he has an agenda to show some way McCain can win. You can either credit it as worthy or not. That's not really my point. My point is he could be right and then to do an analysis to see what would happen if he is.

The Salon article uses stats from other elections to prove his argument. Some of the elections he uses I have a problem with (the Blackwell one for example). But, I also know 3 things:

First, in most of the battlegrounds where Obama is ahead, he is not over 50% in the averages. Yes, the averages include crap polls from Zogby, but this is more a what if analysis so I am going to accept them. It might be worthwhile to come back and revisit it later this week.

Second, there are still pockets of racism in this country. Thank god they seem to be fewer and further between than they were 10 years ago. Unfortunately, the evidence points to the fact that they exist in many of there battleground states. And I don't see the Salon article as arguing for the Bradley effect. Nate Silver convinced me it does not exist with his analysis. I see this as something different, as does (I think) Nate:

It's also clear that there were some patterns in the way that undecided white voters behaved. Number one, a majority of them -- probably somewhere between 60 and 65 percent -- wound up voting for Clinton. This is perhaps not so remarkable, considering that about 60 percent of white voters in the primaries voted for Clinton period. But, this figure was higher in regions like the Appalachians, and among groups like Catholics, and lower in places where you had a lot of WASPy, educated voters. So whether or not you label this a Bradley Effect, I don't know -- but the behavior of undecided voters has been predictable to a certain extent.

Now, it does not necessarily follow that the patterns exhibited by undecided voters in the primaries will match those in the general election. But based both on my research and on what I've been hearing from people on the ground, it's apparent that the public polling in general is not terrific, and that if we have an instinct about where the polls are more likely to come in high or low, we probably ought to follow it.

The 538.com prediction model was updated to account for this:

Take a state like West Virginia, where the polling has been reasonably close but where there are also high numbers of undecided voters. Those undecideds aren't the type of undecideds who are liable to side with Barack Obama when pushed to a decision, and so the state is not quite as promising for him as it looks on paper. There are also a fairly high number of undecideds in Ohio, a state where we think the undecided vote is liable to break slightly for John McCain. On the other hand, a state like Virginia, where Obama overperformed his polls during the primaries and where some polling has had a relatively generous (and probably false) number of African-American votes going to John McCain, might be just a smidgen stronger for Obama than it appears.

So, unless I am way off base, I think 538.com sees the same effect that that Salon author does (Hopefully 538.com will address this Salon article).

Finally, I believe in the old adage that undecides break for the challenger. Except in this election, there is no incumbant. I could make an argument that McCain is the incumbant, being so tied to Bush. I could also make an argument that Obama is the incumbant since everybody and their brother thinks he's gonna win. But I do know that based on the polls in the battlegrounds, undecideds could tip them one way or another.

Do I think this guy is wrong? I do, but until those last votes are cast on Nov. 4 I am not going to count any chickens.