標題:The end of the ride
Nov 4th 2008
From Economist.com
The first polls close in America, as Barack Obama is expected to win
AS THE first polls closed in America on Tuesday November 4th, there were
signs that turnout would be large—with perhaps as many as 130m people voting
—and some small indications that the Democrats would enjoy encouraging
results. Mark Warner, the Democratic candidate to be senator in Virginia, was
projected to pick up a seat there. Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate to
be president, could claim an early victory after Dixville Notch, a tiny
constituency in New Hampsire which usually swings behind the Republicans,
instead backed the senator from Illinois. To nobody's surprise it looked as
if Mr Obama had taken Vermont, whereas his rival, John McCain, had taken
Kentucky. More generally, early exit polls quoted by CNN suggested that most
voters (some 62%) see the economy as the main issue of the election, a fact
which is likely to favour Mr Obama. (To read The Economist's Democracy in
America blog as it produces up-to-the-minute commentary, click here.)
Such indications offered an early confirmation of the opinion polls, which
could hardly be clearer. Mr Obama leads in almost all of the 15 or so “swing
states” that will determine the election. Mr McCain faces not so much of an
uphill battle as a vertical ascent wearing two lead boots, one marked “Bush”
and the other marked “Palin”. He has failed to make any discernible
headway in a target list of five states that went for John Kerry in 2004 and
which he thought he might be able to pick off. And because Mr Kerry so very
nearly threw out George Bush in 2004, Mr Obama has had a solid base on which
to build. It means that all he needs to do is win either one big state that
Mr Kerry lost, such as Ohio or Florida, or win a couple of medium-sized ones.
In fact, Mr Obama looks to have one of Mr Bush's medium-sized states already
in the bag. In Iowa, which voted Democrat in 2000 but Republican in 2004, Mr
Obama is ahead by a whopping 15 points according to an average of recent
polls. Mr McCain, with his well-known hostility to farm subsidies in general
and to subsidies for producing ethanol in particular, has never had a chance
in Iowa. And Iowa, after all, was the site of Mr Obama's famous first
victory, back on January 3rd.
All Mr Obama needs to do is win over a state (or states) worth 11
electoral-college votes, in addition to those that Mr Kerry won, to take him
over the 270 he needs for a majority. This is unlikely to prove a tall order.
The polls show him fairly well ahead in Colorado (nine votes), Nevada (five),
New Mexico (five), and leading in Ohio (20), Florida (27), Virginia (13) and
he is tied in North Carolina (15). There are indications that the race has
been tightening a bit in some of these states, especially in Virginia, where
Mr Obama's lead has halved, from 8 points to 4.2; but he has so many other
chances that it remains hard to see how Mr McCain can prevail. Mr McCain
needs everything to go right for him, and Mr Obama only needs a couple of
breaks.
Virginia will be the first clue. It is a state that last voted Democrat in
1964, as part of the Lyndon Johnson wave. If Mr Obama wins there—it looks
good for him, given the combination of a large black vote and the affluent
Washington suburbs of north Virginia that saw him trounce Hillary Clinton by
28 points—he has almost certainly won the election; Iowa and Virginia on
their own are enough to put him over the line.
But if he does not win Virginia, the likelihood is that there is something
wrong with the polling: a last-minute break by undecided voters in favour of
Mr McCain, a so-far undetected racial bias or some other factor. The next
vital state to watch will be Ohio, which will close and release exit polls
half an hour later, at 7.30pm eastern time, 12.30am GMT. If Mr Obama wins
here too, Mr McCain will be in serious trouble: no Republican has ever won
the White House without winning in Ohio. It went only marginally against Mr
Kerry in 2004, and Mr Obama's organisation here is strong.
Pennsylvania, which will close its polls at 8pm eastern time, 1am GMT,
represents Mr McCain's last real hope: he has been campaigning hard in the
state, which has a high proportion of rural and conservative voters, backed
Mrs Clinton rather than Mr Obama in the primaries and only narrowly goes
Democrat in presidential elections. The polls, however, still show him 7.5
points adrift. If Mr McCain somehow wins though, the entire election will be
thrown into confusion.
At about the same time, the news from Florida should come through (there will
be no hanging chads this year to slow things down: Florida has new
voting-machines). Florida went Republican in the last two elections, but Mr
Obama is now ahead by a couple of points. If he does win in Florida, Mr Obama
will be unstoppable. A clue as to how Florida is going may come an hour
earlier, when voting closes in most of the state bar the “panhandle” in the
west. But given the events of 2000, the networks may well be reluctant to
call Florida until the whole state has closed.
The next big drama will come as the Southern states report: Mr Obama hopes to
break the dominance of the Republicans here and polls show that North
Carolina and Georgia may be within his reach. Later on, the mountain West
looks like another good source of Obama votes: he has high hopes in Montana,
New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada. Even Mr McCain's home state of Arizona might
not be immune.
The other big excitement of the night will be Senate-watching. The Democrats
control the Senate by 51 seats to 49; if they can capture nine more seats
they will take their total to 60, the magic number needed to break
filibusters from the other side. At the moment polls suggest that the
Democrats will pick up eight seats, so might fall just short of the target.
They are also expected to add to their solid majority in the House of
Representatives; though that, frankly will be a bit of a side-show.
http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displayStory.cfm?story_id=12542484&source=features_box_main
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