Listening to Allan Loudell spend ten minutes trying to perform CPR on the cold gray corpse of “the Bradley effect” story on my drive home, I started thinking about going on a modified media black-out and getting all of my news from Mike Matthews afternoon show on delawaretalkradio.com rather than subject myself to the bogus “race tightening” stories that the TV news will be full of for the next seven days.
The national tracking polls will tick up and down, Allan Loudell will continue to pretend that the Bradley effect is real, but what would a real “tightening” race look like? Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight has the answer.
What Would ‘Tightening’ Look Like?
There is a lot of discussion going on about whether the national race is tightening; our model concludes that it is not. But what would meaningful ‘tightening’ look like in terms of the Electoral College?Let me be oddly specific here. In order to conclude the Electoral College has tightened to the point where the outcome on November 4 is at least moderately uncertain, I would want to see the following between now and the election. Call it the 2/2/2 condition:
John McCain polling within 2 points in 2 or more non-partisan polls (sorry, Strategic Vision) in at least 2 out of the 3 following states: Colorado, Virginia, Pennsylvania.
If this condition is met, then I think there could be some drama on Election Night (though by no means would McCain be the favorite). If not, then it’s very hard to imagine McCain winning.