More Polling - Gallup quote and Yahoo EC map

The economy is tanking, and my portfolio is sinking, but I'm being buoyed by the Polls.

This economic mess is going to be handed to our next President to fix, so it's more important then ever, now that the $700 Billion has been approved, that we make sure the right man gets elected to do the job. Who would you rather have; A man who barely made it through the Naval College, graduating fifth from the bottom, known to all to be the 'maverick' because he was in more trouble than he was anything else, not getting kicked out because his daddy was an Admiral, or a man who broke barriers at Harvard and was elected to be President of the Harvard Law Review?

Here's the Yahoo! News Political Dashboard - EC map. This one is based on the RealClearPolitics organization. Look at this map and reason for John McCain's desperation is obvious. The data is a little different than CNNs, but they aren't bashful about the projected 341 EC votes for Obama either. Also, included is the InTrade market prediction. Interesting stuff, and lots of data behind it. You can click on a state and see the polling numbers graphed to see trends, etc.

Gallup:

This 10-day stretch of a significant Obama lead is the longest since [Obama] became the presumptive nominee back in early June, and the longest for either candidate at any point in the campaign.

Hope that helps take your mind off your 401k balance.

On another note, Republicans are hinting voter registration fraud in Indiana. We should remind them of voter fraud in Ohio and Florida (insufficient polling places/machines, 'roadblocks' and intimidation of black voters) during the '04 election. They are just tired of getting their butts kicked by the best grassroots campaign organization ever assembled.

A heartwarming example is what's going on in North Carolina. This state has gone Republican since 1976. McCain is being forced to defend this state, one that most of the politicos thought was safely in the fold. Why? Because of massive voter registrations drives that are 6 to 1 Democratic.

As written in the Washington Post yesterday:

The ratio is more lopsided in North Carolina, where Democrats have added 208,000 voters this year. The 34,000 voters the Republicans have added lags well behind the 148,000 new independents. Four years ago, when Bush won the state with 56 percent of the vote, the picture was different -- Democrats added 192,000 voters during all of 2004, but Republicans nearly matched them with 179,000 new voters of their own.

A disproportionate share of the new voters in North Carolina are minorities. At the start of the year, white voters in the state outnumbered blacks by nearly 4 to 1, and Hispanic voters by 10 to 1. Yet the 146,000 black and Hispanic voters added to the rolls represented nearly three-quarters of the growth among white voters.

Gary Pearce, a Democratic political consultant in North Carolina, said the gap in new registrations is a big reason he thinks Democrats have a chance of carrying the state for the first time since 1976. "It's huge. You talk about a surge -- we think we're going to see it here," Pearce said.