Final Thoughts and Links Before the Election

Here are some follow up thoughts to our election prediction post of last week and some links to check out.

I had a few people question me about my comment surrounding possible fraud on Obama’s contribution web site.  Here are more details: They disabled the security feature that makes sure a billing address matches a credit card number.  This is pretty standard stuff on almost every e-commerce web site.  Many conservative bloggers went onto the site and donated $5 under names such as Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden, A. Hitler and my favorite Fraudulent Voter, with made up addresses and they were accepted.  If you Google “Obama contribution web site security” you will see plenty of postings.  If you don’t want to believe right wing bloggers, here is the NY Times on the story.  By disabling the security, they could take contribution from wealthy donors who already gave their legal limit or from donors outside the US.  The RNC is not going to give up on this one.

When ABC’s Charlie Gibson questioned Barack Obama on the topic, he said it was too hard to report the names of over two million donors from his web site.  Charlie just took the answer and moved on which is unbelievable considering two factors.

1. Anyone with even the most basic knowledge of technology and software knows how simple and easy it is to download a database from a web commerce engine into excel.  The man who made fun of McCain for not using email gets a pass.  Could you imagine the outrage if it was the Republican who raised $600 million, passed on public financing and had this happen on his web site?

2. What happened to Charlie the Grand Inquisitor who spent two days trying to make Sarah Palin look bad? (with assist from Sarah herself)

Here are some other interesting and random tidbits picked up over the weekend.

Great expectations – Obama certainly has his followers whipped up with hope and change and the spreading of wealth.  This clip is a classic and must been seen.  It features Peggy Joseph, Obama supporter, telling a reporter that if Obama wins she won’t have to worry about paying for gas or her mortgage anymore.  The O-man may want to think about managing expectations.  Peggy should probably keep making her mortgage payments for now.

Keeping it in perspective – Check out this local Detroit news clip of a woman who would not give Halloween candy to Obama supporters. You have to watch this nutty lady, her name is Shirley.  This is not exactly going to help the Republican Party build a new image going forward.

Media Bias – A new report from the Kennedy School at Harvard.  They did a solid survey about perceived media bias.  Link to it here, but here is the lead:

Most Americans do not trust what they hear or read in media coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign. Poll results just released by the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School and the Merriman River Group show that 62% of those surveyed are distrustful of campaign media coverage and that same percentage think that the media does a poor job of separating their own opinions from the facts in their reporting. The public’s trust has not improved since one year ago, when a statistically equivalent 64% said they did not trust the media’s election coverage.

Also, incase you have not read it; check out this pretty brave column on media bias and its causes from Michael Malone of ABC News. 

Did you know there are several web sites devoted to Hillary Clinton supporters who still hold a serious grudge against Sen. Obama?  I really doubt many of them will vote for McCain/Palin, but they are still bitter.  Here is a post from one of their forums that is handy to read today.  It is a compilation of news stories from this time four years ago predicting a big Kerry win over Bush. 

I have been looking at polls all weekend, and there is something screwy going on with them, especially the state polling.  They are all over the map from Obama blowouts to three point races in the same state.  I think it has to do with the weighting of likely voters.  They try to weight and balance the proportion of party affiliation to make it representative.  Every pollster is using a slightly different model and that is accounting for the variation.  There is no right answer to know how many new Democratic voters there actually are and if they will come out and vote.  Also, these polls usually undercount Republicans as they did in 2004.  On top of that, no one has any idea of what role race is playing in the polling.  My gut says, based on primary results, that Obama’s numbers are over stated by a 2-3 percentage points.  If that is true and the undecided break for McCain we are at a dead even race.  Or, Obama will win by 7-8 points and the whole thing will be over when PA, Ohio, Virginia and North Carolina are called at 8 pm eastern.  The people running the network polling operation should be pretty careful about using exit polls to make early calls of states.  There are too many unknown weighting variables to take into account this year.  Chances are someone is going to get burned by calling a state wrong based on faulty exit poll projections.

All I know for sure is that on January 21, 2009 (my birthday!) one of these guys is going to spend his first full day in the Oval Office with nothing but trouble and bad news on his famous desk.  Be careful what you wish for, you may get it.