Pales In Comparison

McCain Is Pulling Out Of Michigan

Politico reports that McCain is shutting down his Michigan operation and pulling ads. A campaign event for next week has been canceled. 

Rather HUGE news, given that not too long ago, Michigan was considered a toss-up and Palin provided a huge boost in the western, conservative Evangelical part of the state.

UPDATE: as part of McCain's revised strategy, the AP reports that McCain will open up a front in Maine to compete for our votes.  We're one of only two states in the Union (Nebraska being the other) who divide votes by the Congressional District Method.  Theoretically, we could divide our votes instead of going the winner take all method. But since we adopted the DCM in 1972, we've never split votes and I can safely say, the state of Maine will not go for McCain. We're too smart and too practical.

A Little Ray of Sunshine

Today's Gallup poll shows John McCain's lead holding at a steady 5%.  These National Polling numbers have been making me crazy since early June.

In a country with $4.00 gas, growing unemployment, increasing costs for basic goods and services, why isn't Obama leading by 25 points? We are in the worst economic situation since World War II.   It seems inexplicable.  81% of the country thinks we're headed in the wrong direction.  President Bush is in what Rolling Stone Magazine calls "The longest sustained period of public disapproval."  History has shown that when things goes sour, we put the other guy in the Oval Office to see if he can fix us up.  Things this sour should mean a homerun for any Democratic candidate and surely a grand slam for someone as talented as Barack Obama.   

But yesterday, trying to solve a problem for work, a possible reason for the polling numbers hit me.  If I can't poll teens and college students, how can Gallup or Rasmussen?  If we want to be precise, I can and they can, but it's really tough:
Most college kids only have cell phones. You can't poll a cell phone number unless you have permission to do so.  It's hard to get college kids to show up a focus groups and focus groups are expensive and involve a small sample.
Teens live at home and can't talk to pollsters without parental permission so it's difficult to talk to a high school senior about they're vote. 
If we continue this line of thought, I'm estimating that 80% of the people below 30 in my workplace don't have land lines installed.  They use their cell phone for everything.  These folks aren't getting polled either.  Now in the interest of full disclosure,  my office is in Cincinnati so those are probably McCain votes not getting counted....but on a national sample, I'd guess most of the below 30 vote is at least leaning Obama, except for the extreme evangelical right.

So, even if my theory is flawed (maybe these polling organizations have figured a way to get a representative sample from 18-30 year olds), I'm going to latch on to it as my own little ray of sunshine.