Red to Blue Ohio?

Looking at a composite of polling data at Real Clear Politics, you get the sense that Obama continues to lead McCain in the presidential race, but the RCP trending shows that Obama may have peaked and McCain may have bottomed out.

That's where the RCP data seems a bit different than other polling sites. Within RCP, the Ohio Newspaper poll has McCain +2, and Fox News/Rasmussen has McCain +1. All of the other polling data presented here has Obama up from +2 to +6 in the Buckeye state.

That seems to be a really wide swing, and I'm not sure how the Fox/Rasmussen poll was conducted, but I tend to be suspicious of any data that's preceded by the term "Fox News". The FiveThirtyEight.com polling, which looks at different weightings and demographic indicators, has Obama as a 72% favorite to win Ohio. That's a pretty decisive victory in contrast to RCP.

FiveThirtyEight also does an electoral vote analysis, which again strongly favors Obama and seems like a more likely predictor of outcome than simple polling. The reason - either candidate might win the popular vote in a particular state, but it's the electoral vote that counts, and as Obama demonstrated in his primary win over Hilary Clinton, he was able to concentrate effort and resources in key districts within states to gobble a large percentage of delegates, in some cases where Clinton was hugely popular in the polling, including states Clinton won but where Obama still padded his overall delegate count. There are only a couple of states that aren't "winner take all" when it comes to electoral votes, so the primary scenario won't play out here, but Obama has used the same approach that made him successful in the primary - placing resources, advertising, and volunteers in key districts and locations, which makes him significantly more competitive in states that Bush carried in 2004, and in many cases, McCain is diverting resources from areas where he can't afford to compete to states where he thought winning would be a breeze, like Indiana, that he now needs to work hard in order to stop the momentum Obama has built there.

It remains to be seen how all this fancy polling work translates into what happens on Nov. 4, but there's a couple of dangers here outside of winning and losing. On the Obama side, if polling shows him with huge leads going into election day, there's concern that this might lead to a percentage of the newly registered masses not coming out to vote, believing that the win is assured. Conversely, if McCain supporters think it's hopeless, they might stay home, which could lead not only to McCain's defeat, but could also negatively impact down-ballot candidates.

In any event, everyone should get out there and vote this Nov. 4, regardless of party affiliation. It's a pretty important election this time around, and it's imperative that everyone weighs in. Let's all participate in democracy, folks!