A week ago Nate Silver could make the presidential race in Georgia competitive by ingenious special pleading over turnout. Now he makes it competitive just reading off the latest poll in the state, that shows McCain leading by 3%, within the margin of error. Nationally, tracker poll averages show Obama leading by 8%, well outside any MoE; the Intrade contract for Obama is at 77, and my little 5:1 flutter on his carrying North Carolina is now at 58.
Nate is too professional to predict a landslide. I don’t have any reputation as a seer to lose, so I’m free to go ahead.
I agree with his commenter “tyler curtain” on Michael Barone and similar Republican pundits:
They really are deer-in-the-headlights. And those lights are attached to an electoral Mack truck.
Except that the critter in the headlights is looking less and less like an innocent Bambi and more like this.
Things can still go wrong. But choice-supportive bias – an attested mechanism by which we reduce the stress of cognitive dissonance – is now working for Obama. Once you’ve decided to buy the Prius not the Hummer, the Toyota starts looking better and better. Obama voters won’t change their minds unless McCain can produce the incriminating tape and the goat.
So the £200 pink champagne can stay for now in the presentation box that Mark kindly sent me. (The hastily printed new label “Masters of the Universe – Elite Liberal Bloggers, Grand Cru revanche 2000″ peels off to reveal the previous branding “Masters of the Universe – derivatives trader high-maintenance girlfriend 2007 vintage”. )
But Banco Popular is still in business today, so I think I’ll head for the expat bar on the seafront in search of a celebratory artery-clogging British fryup.
