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McCain's options limited as he tries to catch up

BY REID J. EPSTEIN | reid.epstein@newsday.com

November 2, 2008

With two days left before Election Day, John McCain faces a very narrow path for a come-from-behind victory in the presidential election, according to polling data and a variety of experts.

While experts point to scenarios in which McCain could win, most public polls paint a grim picture for the Arizona senator.

Major poll tracking sites - pollster.com, fivethirtyeight.

com and RealClearPolitics.com - show Obama leading McCain by 6 percentage points nationwide. No modern pre-election national tracking poll has ever erred by more than 2.5 points, said Charles Franklin, a University of Wisconsin professor and co-founder of pollster.com.

Of course, polls have missed late surges by underdogs before. In the 1948 presidential race, polls a week before election day predicted a victory of between 5 percent and 15 percentage points for Republican Thomas E. Dewey over Democrat Harry S. Truman. Truman won by 4.4 points.

Nonetheless, the preponderance of polls on the final weekend of the 2008 election show Obama with potentially safe leads in enough states to win 270 electoral votes, the number necessary for election.

'Too many must-win states'

"A McCain sweep [of battleground states] is highly improbable," said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center in Boston. "The problem is, there are too many must-win states."

Such a sweep would require McCain to win in states where polling shows Obama with significant leads - Pennsylvania, Ohio and Virginia - make comebacks in states, including Colorado and New Mexico, win Florida and then nearly every remaining tossup state: Missouri, Indiana, North Carolina and Georgia, Paleologos said.

The situation had McCain and running mate Sarah Palin spending much of the last week in Pennsylvania, despite being between 7 percent and 12 percentage points behind in statewide polls. McCain's alternative to winning that single large state, Franklin said, would be at least as difficult - flipping two or three states that have the same combined number of electoral votes.

McCain's campaign pollster, Bill McInturff, released a memo Tuesday that claimed the Arizona senator was making "impressive strides" in battleground states and that the election may be too close to call.

McCain pollster sees shift

McInturff predicted the remaining undecided voters - about 5 percent of the electorate in Pennsylvania - would break decidedly for McCain.

But virtually no independent analyst shares that view. Even if McCain swept the state's undecided voters, it wouldn't make up for all of Obama's lead.

"Pennsylvania has been polled more than any other state," said Nate Silver, author of fivethirtyeight.com. "They're all showing the same thing: Obama with a lead ranging from 7 to 14 points."

Working in McCain's favor is that voters in Pennsylvania, unlike residents of other battleground states, don't have access to early voting.

That may give the GOP ticket a few extra days to spread its message.

"If there is some kind of last-minute change, it could help them there," Silver said.

Undecided voters typically split close to evenly in presidential elections, said James Campbell, chairman of the University at Buffalo political science department.

"If there is a strong, compelling message, it's possible" that undecided voters break in large numbers for McCain, Campbell said. "But what I've found in the past is they split more evenly than early deciders."