Will undecideds break largely for McCain?

It’s what Republican pollsters have been saying the last few weeks, and seems to be what Chuck Todd at NBC thinks as well. The net effect would be that Obama’s share of the vote is what current polling pegs it at, while McCain would scoop up the lion’s share of the undecideds, raising his standing on that wave of late-breaking undecideds.

If that scenario is the case, then the race is a lot tighter than it appears, because McCain’s numbers plus the number of undecideds is close to Obama’s numbers in polls. Polling guru Mark Blumenthal, however, disagrees with this scenario, and has some contemporary data to back it up:

As I reviewed in this space back in June, the effect was best described in a 1993 report [PDF] by Larry Hugick of Princeton Survey Research. He examined the final polls in 10 biracial elections in the 1980s and early 1990s and found that they accurately forecast the percentage of the vote received by the black candidate, but typically understated the share of the vote won by the white candidate.

“Only black candidates who broke the 50% level in the final poll were victorious,” Hugick wrote 15 years ago. To “improve the accuracy of pre-election polls in biracial elections,” he suggested a new method: “[Assign] all the black undecided vote to the black candidate and all the remaining undecided vote to the white candidate.”

Today some — including Republican consultant Bill Greener — argue that we should apply Hugick’s method to the current polls. “If you’re a black candidate running against a white candidate, what you see is what you get,” Greener wrote recently for Salon.com. “If you’re not polling above 50 percent, you should be worried.”

McCain pollster Bill McInturff appears to apply that logic in a memo released Wednesday. He argues that “the campaign” in the battleground states “is functionally tied” (emphasis added), in part since Barack Obama’s support is “dropping below 50 percent.” Echoing Greener, he added, “I am becoming more and more convinced Senator Obama ‘gets what he gets in the tracking.’”

His conclusion on this:

if we focus on the data before us, we find little or no evidence of a hidden vote for John McCain.

From Ambinder, the latest Pew poll:

Pew’s Andy Kohut conducts one of the better national surveys out there, and his results today — even assuming that he caught McCain in a downdraft — are fairly stunning. Obama leads by 16 points among likely voters, by 17 points among independents, by 13 points among men, by 20 points among women, is tied among whites, and is up eight among white Catholics.   Of the 15 percent of the sample who’ve already voted, Obama leads by 19 points (although this subsample has a fairly large MoE).  74% of Obama’s backers say they support him “strongly,” which is 20 points higher than the percentage who say the same about their support for McCain.

From Pollster:

by Eric Dienstfrey

Big Ten Battleground Poll
10/19-22/08; 4.2%
Mode: Live Telephone Interviews
(source)

National 1,014 LV, 3.1%
Obama 52, McCain 43

Illinois 572 LV
Obama 61%, McCain 32%

Indiana 586 LV
Obama 51%, McCain 42%

Iowa 586 LV
Obama 52%, McCain 39%

Michigan 562 LV
Obama 58%, McCain 36%

Minnesota 583 LV
Obama 57%, McCain 38%
Sen: Franken (D) 40, Coleman (R-i) 34, Barkley (I) 15

Ohio 564 LV
Obama 53%, McCain 41%

Pennsylvania 566 LV
Obama 52%, McCain 42%

Wisconsin 584 LV
Obama 53%, McCain 42%

From Taegan Goddard:

With 12 days to go, a new Quinnipiac poll finds Sen. John McCain is narrowing the gap in Florida, but fading in Ohio and barely denting Sen. Barack Obama’s double-digit lead in Pennsylvania.

Florida: Obama 49%, McCain 44%

Ohio: Obama 52%, McCain 38%

Pennsylvania: Obama 53%, McCain 40%

Said pollster Peter Brown: “As we enter the home stretch, Sen. Obama is winning voter groups that no Democrat has
carried in more than four decades, and he holds very solid leads in the big swing states. If these
numbers hold up, he could win the biggest Democratic landslide since Lyndon Johnson in 1964.”

Latest Time/CNN poll results:

Colorado: Obama 51, McCain 47
Michigan: Obama 51, McCain 46
Montana: McCain 54, Obama 43
Pennsylvania: Obama 53, McCain 44
West Virginia: McCain 50, Obama 46

Dates conducted: Sept. 21-23. Error margin: 3.5 points.

      

The latest Miami Herald poll puts Senator John McCain slightly ahead of Senator Barack Obama.

McCain 47%

Obama 45%

Key finding:

Obama is in a position to improve his poll numbers, given the confidence in his handling of the economy.

The latest Research 2000 poll in Iowa puts Senator Barack Obama significantly ahead of Senator John McCain.

Obama 53%

McCain39%

Key Finding:

This is the state that started it all for Obama. He’s very popular here.

The latest Public Policy Polling poll in North Carolina finds the presidential election tied there with Barack Obama and John McCain each getting 46% of voters’ support.

From the survey:

Obama has a 58% to 34% advantage with those voters who say the economy is
their biggest concern. He has reclaimed a small lead with North
Carolina independents and increased his share with Democratic voters
since a PPP survey conducted a week and a half ago in the state.

The latest Marist College polls show Obama up 9 points in Michigan, up 2 points in Ohio and up 4 points in Pennsylvania from the previous poll.

Ohio: Obama 44%, McCain 44%

Michigan: Obama 50%, McCain 41%

Pennsylvania: Obama 45%, McCain 42%

In the battleground state of Colorado, Obama is now up 10 points, while the latest Virginia Insider Advantage poll has McCain up by 2 points.

Colorado: Obama 51%, McCain 41%

Virginia: McCain 48%, Obama 46%