MARGIN OF ERROR - August 31, 2008
  

On the eve of the Republican national convention the good news for Republicans, in a year that has the makings of a nightmare scenario

for them – a sagging and uncertain

economy, a deeply unpopular president, and a still-unpopular war – is that the

presidential race remains very close.

The good news for Democrats is that

Barack Obama has so far been running

narrowly but consistently ahead. Most

polls have shown the race within the

margin of error, the statistical haze of

uncertainty that surrounds all polling

results. For both candidates and their

campaigns this means that their own margins of error are very small - neither can afford to make mistakes.

  
Most of the angst about the close race has come from Democrats, for a variety of reasons. The long, close, and contentious primary race left a residue of dismay among Hillary Clinton's primary-season supporters; rising to resentment among the most fervent, as well as a trace of unease among other Democrats about whether the wounds were (or even now are) fully healed. Obama's own strongest supporters may now be victims of their own exaggerated early expectations: Instead of a transformed political landscape they find themselves facing another close race, all too evocative of 2000 and 2004.
  

The powerful if ill-defined impulse for change that characterized much of the electorate of 2007 and early 2008 has subsided, giving way to sharper and more familiar anxieties about rising unemployment and prices. While gasoline prices have fallen from their summer peak, they are still far higher than the US public has been accustomed to paying. Voters in this environment are less likely to be moved by lofty aspirations and inspiring rhetoric, more demanding of nuts and bolts policy proposals. (Had the Democratic primaries been held over the summer, the outcome might well have been different.) The media, enamored of Obama during the primaries, has not forgotten its longstanding love affair with McCain, and recently has been more evenhanded in bestowing its affections, thus in relative terms at least drifting toward McCain. All of these factors are of concern to Democrats. Last but certainly not least, Democrats have a long tradition of worrying about their prospects.
  

Republicans, in contrast, are relieved that things are not worse. (On the congressional level they are worse: Whatever the outcome of the presidential race, Democrats are likely to expand their razor-thin majority in the Senate into a solid one, and widen their margin in the House of Representatives.) In the presidential race, however, Republicans find themselves more competitive than they might have hoped for six months ago. Although many core conservatives have neither liked nor trusted McCain, rumblings of discontent have largely subsided. Republicans tend to pride themselves on falling into line, and for the most part have done so.
  

The polling tells a story both simpler and subtler than either partisan narrative. The general election race has so far been not only close, it has been exceptionally stable. The long term graph of the Gallup daily tracking poll at the Gallup website gives a handy visual measure of how stable the race has been through the last month, providing a large number of data points collected by a single organization and thus by the same methodology. The rival Rasmussen daily tracking poll is not reported with a graphic, but a glance at its daily numbers tells the same story. In both polls the two candidates move up or down slightly from day to day, the movements in the two tracking polls being often but by no means always in step with each other.
From time to time Obama's margin widens to six or eight points – reaching 9 points at the peak of his convention "bounce" - at other times McCain pulls even, occasionally edging ahead by a point or so. Such excursions in either direction are brief, however; viewed over a period of a few weeks what is striking is the gravitational tendency toward stability. This stability has in fact been characteristic of recent US presidential elections. Bill Clinton's margin over Bush the elder in 1992 was fairly stable from the time that Ross Perot left the race after the Democratic convention till he jumped back in in the closing days. His 1996 race against Bob Dole showed similar stability, while the 2000 and 2004 elections showed preference patterns that were both stable and notoriously close. It should be the least of surprises that the 2008 race, so far, is showing similar stability.
  

Because the race is both close and stable, distinguishing real movement from transient effects and sheer statistical noise is difficult. But because the race is close and stable, small movements, if real and persisting, can have large consequences. Thus, in the last week before the Democratic convention, the release of several polls showing modest movement toward McCain pushed a good many Democrats from their familiar angst into a state verging on panic. This could be seen for example at Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo, perhaps the most highly regarded liberal blog. In the days just before the Democratic convention it was filled with advice about what Obama should do – by implication, things he is not doing.
  

All of this may prove to be transient. Obama got the expected bounce in the polls from the Democratic convention, less in the Rasmussen daily tracker than in Gallup's, and it may be shorter-lived than in the past, since the Republican convention follows almost immediately. (The national party conventions, which till around 1970 actually chose party nominees, have since that time become televised rallies for nominees determined during the primary season.) On the other hand, the Republican convention may have to compete for news coverage with Hurricane Gustav, which moreover now appears posed to hit land near New Orleans, an unwelcome evocation of Hurricane Katrina almost exactly three years ago. Only by about the second week of September, with both conventions faded out of the news, will polling again be a relatively reliable measure of the overall shape of the race.
  

For Democrats the convention came not a day too soon. The greatest danger in the pre-convention narrowing of Obama's already-narrow lead was not the change in the numbers themselves, a matter of two or three percentage points, but the sapping of morale and enthusiasm. For a party all too accustomed to losing presidential races, nothing builds enthusiasm like the taste of victory in the air. This taste was strong in the spring, and polls still show Democrats to be more enthusiastic about Obama and his prospects than Republicans are about McCain and his. In a close race this difference in voltage can be decisive – and it is exactly what seemed to be slipping away.
  

At least in the short term, the Democratic convention has achieved precisely what its planners hoped for. Hillary and Bill Clinton gave such resounding endorsements to Obama as to lay largely to rest concerns about disgruntled Hillary supporters – and, perhaps, to suggest that the news media were 'gamed' by pre-convention talk of continuing tension between the camps. Obama's vice-presidential choice, Senator Joe Biden, though not a consistently electrifying speaker, has been generally acknowledged as a strong choice, strengthening the Democratic ticket among working class voters in industrial states, and bringing a wealth of experience and serious thought about foreign policy, an area in which Obama's credentials were open to challenge. Obama's acceptance speech, delivered in a sports stadium to a live audience of some 80,000 people, faced the challenge of exceedingly high expectations and met them easily, combining his trademark oratorical power with policy substance reminiscent of Bill Clinton at his best.
  

John McCain's vice-presidential pick, first-term Alaska governor Sarah Palin, has at least the virtue of surprise; not only the Obama campaign but many Republicans were clearly taken aback, unsure what to say about the choice. On the one hand Palin is a fresh face, and only the second woman (after Democrat Geraldine Ferraro in 1984) to be on a major-party presidential ticket. On the other hand, her short resume undermines McCain's 'inexperience' argument against Obama, she faces questions about having used inappropriate pressure on other public officials, and as an extreme conservative is unlikely to appeal to whatever former Hillary supporters might still remain disaffected. Vice-presidential nominees have rarely had any measurable influence on the general election, but for Obama and McCain alike there is no margin of error, no room to make mistakes or lose momentum.
 

Rick Robinson

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Author of the article holds B.A. degree in Economics from the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) and M.A. degree in English from California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California . Mr. Robinson worked as a county-level campaigner in Dukakis (1988) and Clinton (1992) presidential campaigns. He presently works as a journalist and political commentator.

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