After all the good polling news I've been reporting, I think I'd be remiss in not also spending some time talking about the bad. Namely Oklahoma's numbers. They aren't just bad, they are crappy. The trend isn't even particularly good.
The two sharp angles there are I believe the Republican convention (and Palin pick), and the start of the bank bailout crisis. Notice how the crisis didn't actually turn McCain's number around, it just stopped his growth.
If you look at these numbers, they put us in the rarefied territory of only two other "red" states: Utah and Idaho (%29.6 and %29.5 Obama respectively). This is why a lot of the area Obama campaigns (but not us!) are asking area volunteers to abandon Oklahoma and drive to Missouri or Colorado to help out there.
Utah and Idaho have a several things in common. They are both very sparsely populated states. They are very isolated states, cut off from this country's major population centers by rugged mountain ranges and vast distances. They are monocultural. Idaho is %97 white. Utah is %95 white and %60 Mormon. Oklahoma doesn't really look much like those states at all, so why is it polling like them?
One of the main reasons is that, while we have large native and african-american minorities in this state, they historically don't vote. All of these polls are skewed by "likely voter" weightings. Thus no matter how strongly that quarter of the state feels about a candidate, it isn't going to show up in the polls.
The problem with this logic is that this is simply not a typical election. Tomorrow I'll go over that in more detail, and why we have hope and should keep fighting for Oklahoma.
Debate
Don't forget the debate watch party tomorrow night. If you aren't hosting or attending one in your neighborhood, meet us at the Circle Quad.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
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