Poll analyst Mark Blumenthal posted an early update this morning on 15 polls he has been tracking, and he cites a “very slight narrowing” of Obama’s lead in “key battleground states.” As of about 7:00 a.m., his forecast of 311 electoral votes for Obama vs. 142 for McCain, with 85 ev’s still a “toss-up” remained unchanged. Blumenthal will post another update this evening reflecting polls coming in today.

One day out, Chris Bowers, who has followed Senate race polls closely at Open Left, is predicting a solid 7-seat pick-up for Dems. In his analysis, based on poll averages, he explains:

Polling shows that we are going to win Alaska, Colorado, New Hampshire, New Mexico and Virginia. Polling, plus huge early voting numbers, shows that we are going to win North Carolina and Oregon, too. Given that we aren’t going to lose any seats, that makes seven pickups. Overall, that gives Democrats 57 seats (with Sanders), plus maybe Lieberman, plus Biden as a tie-breaker. That will be enough to pass Obama’s agenda.

Bowers sees MN as “a real toss-up,” but has doubts about Martin winning a run-off in GA. (But hey, what if Obama and Sam Nunn campaign hard for him?)

Avi Zenilman’s Politico article. “Dems’ Firewall: Secretary of State Offices,” reports on a largely overlooked story of campaign ’08. As Zenilman explains it,

In anticipation of a photo-finish presidential election, Democrats have built an administrative firewall designed to protect their electoral interests in five of the most important battleground states.
The bulwark consists of control of secretary of state offices in five key states — Iowa, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico and Ohio — where the difference between victory and defeat in the 2004 presidential election was no more than 120,000 votes in any one of them.

Dem secretaries of state in battleground states are now “better positioned” to prioritize voter registration and increase turnout and perhaps more importantly, to interpret and administer election law, adds Zenilman. His article spotlights the big difference Ohio Democratic Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner has made in making it hard for Republicans to steal votes this year, and Seyward Darby has more on Brunner’s efforts in his New Republic article , “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall.”
Zenilman credits an independent 527 group, The Secretary of State (“SOS”) Project for raising $500,000 that helped win ’06 secretary of state races for Democrats, along with ActBlue, which contributed $24,000 to help elect Democrat Mary Herrera to the SOS post in NM. The Project sees a good chance to elect Dem SOS candidates tomorrow in MO, MT, OR and WV.

TDS Co-Editor Stan Greenberg of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner and Democracy Corps has a very interesting response to a memo by McCain’s lead pollster, Bill McInturff, which made a case that McCain is on track for an upset win on Tuesday. Greenberg’s letter follows:
Dear Bill,
I very much enjoyed your spirited note on the state of the race and Barack Obama’s “ballot position.” It reminds me how much I miss our times working together on the bipartisan polls for NPR and for many of our corporate clients. I miss in particular the banter before those meetings when your Republican colleagues fretted over their teenage children going off to Obama rallies.
Using your last four days of tracking polls in your battleground states and your underlying analysis you conclude that “this is a hard election to predict” because of the unprecedented interest and likely turnout, and that “all signs say we are headed to an election that may easily be too close to call by next Tuesday.” You get there by underscoring a number of emerging patterns – “what we know for sure.” First, “The McCain campaign has made impressive strides over the last week of tracking.” Second, that the campaign is “functionally tied across the battleground states.” Third, “the key number in our mind is Senator Obama’s level of support,” which is dropping below 50 percent, with good reason to believe that Obama “gets what he gets in the tracking” – with few prospects of more votes from the undecided, African Americans or turnout patterns. Fourth, that Obama’s margin over McCain is “beginning to approach margin of error with a week left.” Fifth, McCain is achieving breakthroughs with “soft Democrats,” “Wal-Mart women” and an “impressive pop” with independents. And finally, that “Joe the Plumber” has astounding recognition and changed the debate on taxes and the economy.
All of us Greenberg Quinlan Rosner were in awe of the boldness of these assertions, as they, we are sure, honestly reflect the data, show a nuanced use of language and topics, and weave a story that almost gets to the conclusions that this race is opening up, unpredictable, and closing, without formally saying those things. What is interesting is that some of the findings match ours, but with a fuller picture, take us to a different close.
We wanted to take this opportunity to discuss the “things we know for sure”

Read more…

Lots of states are claiming to be potential kingmakers next Tuesday. But as the battleground states become more narrowly defined, Florida is shaping up as the Gettysburgh of campaign, ’08, at least in terms of resources deployed. Certainly, no battleground state is attracting more ad money, candidate/surrogate appearances and ground troops massing for the closing week of the campaign.
Political junkies will have no trouble finding good reporting on the battle of Florida. As for the latest opinion polls, a Reuters/Zogby poll released just today has Obama and McCain tied at 47 percent, within two points of the percentage for Obama in nearly all of the most recent October polls posted by Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com. Taking a range of factors into consideration, however, Silver gives Obama a 75 percent chance of winning Florida. CQPolitics.com Polltracker, cites a Suffolk University poll of LV’s, conducted 10/23-26, giving Obama a 49-44 edge in the Sunshine State, but notes “telltale signs of the race tightening” in bellwether counties.
E. J. Dionne, Jr.’s column in today’s WaPo, “The Endgame in Florida,” explains why “even Republican bastions are starting to crumble.” In his post “Obama’s Florida Shot: A Key to Victory,” Mark Silva of the Chicago Tribune Washington, D.C. Bureau’s ‘The Swamp’ adds:

…In this state traditionally insulated from national economic woes, unemployment has risen above the national average, the housing market has collapsed and foreclosures are epidemic…the stunning decline of the stock market, and with it the portfolios of a state home to millions of retirees, and an unsettling federal intervention in the banking industry have stood to benefit a candidate who already had vastly outspent and out-organized his rival. Obama has outspent McCain by three-to-one in TV ads here and his drive to register new, particularly young voters, his 50 field offices and plan to turn voters out to the polls represent a Democratic drive unseen in this state before.

The New York Times has a new video clip on “The (Surprising) Battle for Florida,” which cites Obama’s inroads in securing the Hispanic and Jewish vote as instrumental in Obama’s improving Florida prospects.
Dave G. at Digital Journal has an update on what is being done to reduce confusion over polling sites. But after the Republican Secretary of State ordered a new computer match system implemented in September, election officials found that 75 percent of some 20,000 voter registration applications were mismatched “due to typographical and administrative errors,” according to a CNN report. Democrats are outnumbering Republicans 3 to 1 in early voting, according to today’s edition of the Miami Herald. And Timothy Martin has an Alternet post up today, describing a classic Florida Republican tactic to suppress Democratic votes:

Many here have criticized the Pinellas County Supervisor of Elections, Deborah Clark, as being responsible for the long waits and irregularities. Clark, considered a partisan Republican, decided to open only three early voting locations countywide. That’s down from seven locations in 2004, despite more interest in early voting. Early voters tend to vote Democratic here, and will likely skew even more toward Democrats given Barack Obama’s visit to neighboring Tampa on Monday, Oct. 20, where he emphasized the importance of voting early in this election.
Clark’s decision to scale back the number of polling stations was blasted in an editorial by the major local daily, The St. Petersburg Times, which had ironically just endorsed her for reelection.

It is estimated that 40 percent of Floridians will vote early, but Republicans have a big edge in absentee voting, says Nicholas Azzara of the Bradenton Herald.

Democracy Corps has a particularly cogent analysis of last nights debate. The overview follows:

John McCain entered tonight’s debate needing to halt Barack Obama’s momentum and fundamentally change the dynamic of the race. Not only did he fail to achieve this goal, McCain dug himself an even deeper hole.Undecided voters watching the debate felt McCain gave a decidedly un-presidential performance, appearing rude, negative, and easily flustered – a stark contrast to Barack Obama’s cool, commanding presence. Obama was seen as the clear victor in the debate, and a group that was much more disposed to support McCain at the outset instead shifted decisively toward Obama (42 to 20 percent) after viewing the debate.

Read more…

In the CBS News/Knowledge Networks poll undecideds chose Obama by a margin of 53 percent to 22 percent, with 25 percent for a draw.
Independents preferred Obama 60 percent to 30 percent in the Media Curves poll.
The CNN/Opinion Research poill of “debate-watchers” gave the win to Obama by a margin of 58 percent to 31 percent. Among Independent debate-watchers, the margin favored Obama 57-31.
Democracy Corps ‘dial and focus groups’ survey of 50 undecided Denver voters said Obama won the 3rd debate by a 50 to 24 percent margin. After the debate 42 percent of the respondents said they would support Obama, compared to 20 percent who supported McCain.
A majority of the 23 uncommitted Arlington, VA voters in Frank Luntz’s Fox News focus group said Obama won the debate, while zero chose McCain.

You couldn’t say it any better than did Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Jay Bookman, when he responded to the shared lament of Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin while she was being interviewed on his radio program that the MSM was trying to shut her up. Bookman replies:

No, Gov. Palin, the media don’t want you to shut up. To the contrary, every media outlet in the country is begging you to appear on their show. If you want to go on Meet the Press, Face the Nation, This Week, Late Edition, if you want to hold your first actual press conference, if you want to join the free-for-all tomorrow night spinning the aftermath of the presidential debate, the media would welcome you with open arms.
Speak, Sarah. Speak. If you care so much about this great country, tell the McCain campaign to stop stifling you and speak.
And yet she doesn’t. The “pitbull with lipstick” runs and hides.

AT MSNBC.com‘s politics web pages, New York Times reporter Rachel L. Swarns discusses the increase in black elected officials representing predominatly white districts and constituencies across the nartion, and the good it has done for the nation, as well as Democrats and Obama.
Thomas Frank’s Wall St. Journal op-ed “The GOP Peddles Economic Snake Oil: Suddenly Republicans Are Against Market Values” is a useful read for Dem candidates at all levels. Frank captures the irony of the GOP scam: “Conservative misrule, prompted by conservative disdain for government, proves that government cannot be trusted — and that the only answer is to elect another round of government-denouncing conservatives.”
At HuffPo, Pulitzer Prize recipient Carl Bernstein sheds some fresh light on the question “Does John McCain pal around with terrorists?” in view of McCain’s controversial friendship with Watergate burglar and advocate of political violence G. Gordon Liddy. (See also James Vega’s TDS post on the topic)
CNN political editor Mark Preston takes a look at the increasingly important role of independent groups in the political ad wars of the presidential campaign, noting that pro-GOP expenditures now match Dem outlays.
Christopher Hitchens makes the case for Obama, or at least against McCain-Palin at Slate. Best line: “It therefore seems to me that the Republican Party has invited not just defeat but discredit this year, and that both its nominees for the highest offices in the land should be decisively repudiated, along with any senators, congressmen, and governors who endorse them.”
Alex Green and Rick Klein have an ABCnews.com update on the Dems’ quest for a ‘super-majority’ in the U.S. Senate, including a focus on prospects to unseat Senator Elizabeth Dole in NC.
And Over at the Princeton Election Consortium, Sam Wang reports on Republican activists’ “Save the Filibuster” campaign and their call on the RNC to redirect $15 million from the McCain campaign to key senate races — and Wang challenges Dems to “get on the bus” and invest some dough down ballot as well.

All but forgotten amid the excitement of the presidential race, the 11 governorship elections that will also be decided on November 4th are nonetheless important to the future of the Democratic Party. Dems are defending six governorships, Republicans have five. Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball ’08 has the inside skinny on each of the races, and an excerpt from his take follows:

…We think the most likely national outcome ranges from a net Democratic gain of one governorship, to a net Republican gain of one. This is no earth-shattering shift either way, yet one party will get minor bragging rights–unless the highest probability outcome occurs: that is, shifts in two or three states produce no net change in the total of 28 D, 22 R governors (the current net line-up).

Sabato, who has an impressive track record in his election outcome predictions, rates MO as the most likely Dem pick-up, and he sees WA and NC as toss-ups.