Ignore the McCain vs. Obama polls

In the absence of other political news, pundits are obsessing over head-to-head matchups between McCain and Obama. It's much ado about very little.


May 17, 2008 | WASHINGTON -- A grave crisis confronts America: The Democratic nomination fight that would never end is about to. With Hillary Clinton's days as a plausible presidential candidate dwindling down to a precious few, the question now haunting the nation is the same one that Robert Redford pondered at the end of "The Candidate": "What do we do now?"

For cable television, this is a debacle on par with the end of the O.J. trial. From April 15 to May 15, 69 percent of the airtime on the cable news networks was devoted to presidential politics during key viewing hours, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism. To repeat: The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the Pennsylvania primary and Obama's ascension received double the TV news coverage of the rest of the world combined, from Burmese typhoons to a forgotten president named Bush.

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What do you do, more than five months prior to the general election, when the supply of significant political news cannot keep up with the demand? Thank God for pollsters, and red and blue maps, and Electoral College widgets.

As the talking heads on TV (along with those of us who still traffic in written words) switch to saturation coverage of Obama vs. McCain, every blip in the national polls is treated as a revelation on par with Dick Cheney's personal invasion plans for Iran. Forests are being turned into pulp analyzing what it means that, say, the nightly Rasmussen presidential tracking poll has Obama and McCain knotted at 45 percent each.

In truth, May horse-race polls have the predictive powers of a 7-year-old dressed up as a swami and using an upside down goldfish bowl to peer into the future. In the last five presidential elections, the Gallup Poll conducted right before Memorial Day got the eventual winner of the national popular vote wrong. From Michael Dukakis' 13-percentage-point lead in 1988 to John Kerry's 4-point edge in 2004, the Gallup Poll (like other national surveys) pointed in precisely the wrong direction. The only unequivocal success story was 1996, when Gallup (along with virtually every sentient American) figured out that the then-youthful Bill Clinton would handily defeat Bob Dole, the oldest first-time presidential nominee in history (McCain included).

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The most dominant political story for the next three months will be the casting of the ballots in America's two most important non-free elections: Obama's and McCain's choice of running mates. If history is any guide, the pick-the-veep speculation will be for naught. At this point in 2000, the only mentions of Dick Cheney in the news are glancing references to his role in helping Bush winnow down the field of candidates for the heartbeat-away job. A NEXIS search from May 15-30, 2000, failed to find a single major newspaper (aside from the Hartford Courant) that even spent much time speculating about Joe Lieberman's chances to be on the ticket with Al Gore.

More at link

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/05/17/electoral_map/

cause it will be all about the body count come November.

Today is our first meeting here since the PA primary.