Part IV: Barack Obama wins popular vote. McCain wins electoral college and Presidency.

The race is getting closer and there are some trends that spell doom for Barack Obama! In the last few weeks there has been a 20 point closing of the gap, with voters 18-30 years old, in favor of McCain. There has been a 16 point closing of the gap, with voters 30-45 years old, in favor of McCain. There has been no change with voters 45-65 years old and among voters 65+ years old, Obama has moved ahead by 11 points. What does all this mean?

• The changes with voters 18-30 and 30-45 show that John McCain's attacks on Obama as a tax and spend liberal are working. People from their mid-20s to their mid-40s are historically more concerned about someone raising their taxes.
• The lack of change with voters 45-65 shows they might just have made up their minds.
• The change in favor of Obama with voters 65+ show that Obama's attacks on McCain, which link him to President Bush's Social Security Reform, are working.

What do all these things mean when put together?

They show that the race is tightening and that a number of people are becoming wary of Barack Obama's and Joe Biden's many gaffes and unpopular statements of the last month. Hardworking Americans do not like to hear, "Spread the wealth". People do not like to hear, "Paying taxes is patriotic". People are also starting to wonder why a year ago Obama said rich was someone making more than $1 million a year, then a few months ago said rich was $250k, then Biden said it was $150k, and now Bill Richardson, the governor of New Mexico and a supporter of Obama, says it is $120k? Even if those changes are not really changes in policy and/or are taken out of context and/or anything else that Obama's campaign wants to use to defend them...it does not matter! Perception is reality and you can not erase those statements from this campaign. They are there and no amount of explaining will make them go away and people will decide on their own what they mean.

How do these changes support my contention that Obama will win the popular vote but McCain will win the electoral college and the Presidency?

These changes back up my prediction by showing that Obama is vulnerable. My assertion that people will be scared away from Obama the closer they get to actually having to vote for him, also has weight. Lastly, I actually take the 11 point swing towards Obama, with voters 65+, as a positive for McCain. McCain will not do it, for his own reasons, but a group called GOPTrust.com is going to saturate all the swing states with an ad about Reverend Wright. This ad will have the most effect on voters 65+, they are more likely to be patriotic and should be more sensitive to anti-American sentiments and racial issues, thus negating the only positive trend that Obama has in the closing weeks of this election.

Barack Obama wins popular vote. McCain wins electoral college and Presidency

I am 100% sure that Barack Obama will win the popular vote but John McCain will win the electoral college and the Presidency. Everyone is playing up the poll numbers and Barack Obama's lead in those polls as if they are devastating news to John McCain. They are not. Polls are very inaccurate. One can see how inaccurate polls are just by looking at how none of them agree. In addition to the inherent inaccuracies in polls there is the way that the issue of race skews the accuracy of polls even further.

The first issue of race effecting polls is the Bradley effect and the reverse Bradley effect. The Bradley effect, as it is called, is a way to describe how when an African-American is running against a white opponent, the poll numbers sometimes do not match the actual vote totals. Basically it is hypothesized that white voters say they will vote for the African-American candidate or that they are undecided and then vote for the white candidate which was their intention all along. Some say this might be because white voters fell uneasy answering the question of who they will vote for because it might be seen as a racial decision. To avoid the appearance of racism these voters say they will vote for the African-American candidate or say they are undecided, when they have already made up their mind to vote for the white candidate, just to avoid the question. The reverse Bradley effect is used to explain why some African-American candidates poll lower and then get more votes in the final election. This hypothesis is based on the idea that pollsters are not polling enough African-Americans or young voters.

There are some who believe in the Bradley effect(Fred Barnes), some that do not(McCamy Taylor), and some that do but think it is no longer relevant such as Nate Silver and Dan Hopkins.

RealClearPolitics Poll Averages

General Election: McCain vs. Obama

Poll	Obama (D)	McCain (R)
RCP Average	49.0	43.9
Gallup Tracking	52	41
Rasmussen Tracking	51	45
Reuters/CSpan/Zogby Tracking	47	45
Hotline/FD Tracking	45	44
GW/Battleground Tracking	49	45
Ipsos/McClatchy	47	40
NBC News/Wall St. Jrnl	49	43
CBS News	48	45
CNN	53	45
Democracy Corps (D)	49	46

More Polling Data | Chart | News

Looking at these up-to-date poll numbers one can see that they are all different and most are close. The biggest lead for Obama is eleven points on one poll and only one point on another poll. First I would like to point out that four of these polls are within the margin of error. Second we must add in the Bradley effect, if anything like that actually exists, to see the effect it may have. For this exercise let us believe that the Bradley effect is real and the percentage of which it effects the polls is 5%, which would be a mild Bradley effect compared to the double digit swings that have happened in the past. If true, the Bradley effect would give John McCain the lead in five of these national polls while Obama would retain a lead in the five others. Sounds pretty close to me? The Bradley effect makes this race a dead heat but does anything like the Bradley effect really exist?

Yes, it does. But it is not the Bradley effect that will change this election. It is how race effects an election as a whole that will change this election, especially a national election which cuts across so many different regions of the country. Race is playing a huge role in the election but most people are treating it like the 800 pound gorilla in the room. Barack Obama's own advisers believe that race effects this election because they have crafted his image and his responses so they do not offend the white majority. There is a fear that he would be portrayed as the "angry black man" if he ever loses his temper in public. Other Democrats have played the race card as well when they have rebuffed some criticisms of Obama as being racially motivated. Race is everywhere in this election and it will be a deciding factor in this election.

Racism and reverse racism will be a factor in this election. It is unfortunate but there are still a number of people in this country who will not vote for an African-American candidate(racism). On the other end of the spectrum, I have talked to white friends who are thinking about voting for Obama because he is black(reverse racism). When I questioned them about why they were going to do that, I was told that they thought, if Obama was elected, that it might heal some of the racial wounds our country suffers from. This is a noble idea but it is still racism to pick a candidate solely on the color of their skin. We can not avoid the truth that there are people in this country who will decide to vote for or against a candidate strictly because of the color of their skin. This being the first national election to pit an African-American candidate against a white candidate, and a very close competition, it will be decided by those who cast their vote on race alone. This is not the Bradley effect. The Bradley effect is someone hiding their vote because of the issue of race. My contention is that these people will vote because of race. I believe that there are a lot more people out there who will cast their vote due to racism(against Obama) rather than what I call reverse-racism(for Obama). That is why I am 100% sure that Barack Obama will win the popular vote by a small margin but John McCain will win the electoral college and the Presidency. If Obama was exactly the same in every way except for being white instead of black, this presidential race would already be over and he would win by a landslide.