Poll-nographic Images

Much has been made by the Right of the Gallup "traditional estimate" poll, made using past esitmates of turnout models (the so called "likely voters") as opposed to the other polls using current turnout models ("registered voters").

Gallup in fact has two polls, one likely voters, one registered voters. The McSame camp was giddy as a schoolgirl when the likely voter poll showed Obama's lead had narrowed from 7 points to just two points in three days, from October 24 (51-44%) to October 27th (49-47%).

The McSame camp and the wingnuts assured America that young people and minorities were simply not going to vote this year, that the turnout was going to follow more traditional models, and that John McCain would be able to pull out a close upset victory if not be ahead by the final weekend and go on to win. It was important because Obama had fallen below 50%, and McSame was within the margin of error. The McSame camp predicted that therefore this proved the race was in fact a tossup.

Smug and assured, they laughed at Obama's half-hour ad buy and said it would backfire, doing more harm than good. It would be Obama being "uppity and presumptuous" again, adressing the nation with a "crass infomercial".

And since October 27th, since Obama's half-hour "closing argument" ad buy on Wednesday night, they expected John McSame to be in control heading into the final weekend before Tuesday's election. The trends were clear, and they believed in the "likely voter" model.

But, there's one small detail they forgot to factor in, you see. The McSame campaign has been much been 100% WRONG about everything.

For you see, Obama is now leading the Gallup likely voter poll by ten points.

Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) has taken the largest lead yet among likely voters against Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) in the national Gallup poll released Saturday. Obama expanded his lead to ten percent from nine percent on Friday.

Obama's lead is a dramatic rise from the 49-47 percent margin that Gallup registered just four days ago.

Gallup added, "This is the first time since Gallup began estimating likely voters in early October that there is no difference between Gallup's two likely voter models. Obama's lead of 52% to 42% using Gallup's traditional estimate of likely voting criteria takes into account past voting as well as current intentions. Obama's identical lead using the expanded model takes into account only current voting intentions."

"Both of these likely voter estimates in turn are almost identical to Gallup's 52% to 41% registered voter estimate.

McSame had a chance if he stayed above 45 and Obama at 50. Now? Now he's in trouble. The dominoes are falling in the other direction. It greatly appears that Obama's ad buy may have in fact sealed the deal among undecided voters instead of hurting him.

We may have reached a tipping point here with less than 48 hours before polls open.