Obama's 18 state campaign - Plouffe "McCain has to win Colorado" "Daily Tracking Polls are terrible"

grantcart

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Fri Aug-29-08 04:52 PM
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Obama's 18 state campaign - Plouffe "McCain has to win Colorado" "Daily Tracking Polls are terrible"

Obama's team outlines exactly how they are going to win

Missed in all of the convention coverage was a penetrating presentation by Plouffe that also got some CSPAN coverage. Mark Blumenthal followed up with an interview: http://www.pollster.com/blogs/plouffe_on_obama_and_polling.php

The following group gave an "on the record" interview:

Obama campaign manager David Plouffe, communications director Dan Pfeiffer and campaign advisor Anita Dunn for a dozen or so editors and executives of the Atlantic Media company and the National Journal Group.

Marc Binder also covered the event.
http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/08/barack_mccains_margin_among_in.php

Here are the key points:

1) Only 18 states are going to have an impact:

The 18 states that the Obama campaign is focusing on are: Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Virginia.

2) The campaign doesn't care about any national polls:

"All we care about is these 18 states," he said. He repeated, with emphasis, that the campaign does not care about national polling. Instead, the campaign's own identification, registration and canvassing efforts provide the data he uses to determine where to invest money and resources.

3) The top line of the polls are meaningless - they only track the 'data underneath'

Plouffe also emphasized that the internal polling the campaign does is focused on those same 18 states,** and that their real concern is not the horse race results but the "data underneath." Later, he added, "the top-line doesn't tell you anything." Rather, they focus on who the "true undecideds" are, "how they're likely to break," and what messages will best persuade them

4) As has been noted at DU and proven every morning on phrigndumass's outstanding daily thread Gallup's national poll is a joke.

Communications director Dan Pfieffer later put it more bluntly, expressing unhappiness with the "inordinate focus on bad polling" by the media and also in the routine misinterpretation of sampling noise in the Gallup Daily poll. "The Gallup Daily is the worst thing that's happened in journalism in 10 years," he said.

5) The election will be decided by turnout:

Much of the briefing covered specifics on the focus on turnout by the Obama campaign and their massive effort to "adjust the electorate" to their benefit. He cited several examples, including Florida where he claimed that roughly 600,000 African Americans that were registered but did not vote in 2004 , with more than half of that group coming from African Americans under 40 years of age. "If we just execute on turnout" in Florida, he said, "we're going to be bumping up on our win number." They also believe they can keep states like Virginia and North Carolina competitive if they "blow the doors off turnout."

6) McCain being out of touch will be a central theme to election day

"The development on the out of touch argument is an actually critical development of the campaign," he said, because "some of the voters images of McCain don't jibe with reality."

7) Other miscellaneous observations:

Other nuggets from Plouffe:

** If McCain doesn't win Colorado, "he has a 5% chance to win the election."

** He believes that they have "a slight edge" in Virginia.

** He said Obama is underperforming only among working class whites over 70 and pointed to a poll showing that Obama is over performing John Kerry with working class white voters under 50.

** Said that the campaign's target in Georgia is about 47% of the vote, owing to Ex-Rep. Bob Barr's ability to siphon votes away from John McCain.

** Said HIllary Clinton's speech "could not have gone better."

Here is where pollster Charles Franklin puts those important 18 states

Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Iowa, New Mexico all very strong with Colorado, Montana, New Hampshire, Virginia and Nevada leaning for Obama. Ohio a toss up.

Note his comparison of the difference between Obama and McCain safe states:

These guys know what they are doing and just like the convention they are executing a carefully laid out plan. They are confident for a good reason, they know what they are doing.