With Sen. Barack Obama on the brink of becoming the 44th President of the United States, it's interesting to note that the first 16 presidents could have legally owned Obama as a slave.

As people across America seek information about Tuesday's presidential election, many will be tempted to seek out leaked exit polls. However, Sen. John McCain's lead pollster, Bill McInturff warns that they may not be very reliable.

From: Bill McInturff

Subject: Reading the Exit Polls

Date: November 3, 2008

As we have seen in previous election cycles, the exit poll results do leak early and that ends up influencing the coverage of the race before even the first state polls close at 6:00 PM Eastern.

However, we want to remind the campaign that the media's own post-election study of the exit polls in 2004 showed that the exit polls overstate the Democratic candidate's support. Therefore, we would discourage a rush to judgment based on the exit polls and wait until there has been a representative sampling of actual tabulated results from a variety of counties and precincts in a state.

Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg responds to the memo released a few days ago by McCain pollster Bill McInturf declaring the presidential race "too close to call."

"Dear Bill,

I very much enjoyed your spirited note on the state of the race and Barack Obama's 'ballot position.' It reminds me how much I miss our times working together on the bipartisan polls for NPR and for many of our corporate clients. I miss in particular the banter before those meetings when your Republican colleagues fretted over their teenage children going off to Obama rallies."

Read the whole letter.

Despite public polling showing Sen. Barack Obama with leads nationally and in the key battleground states, Sen. John McCain's top pollster, Bill McInturff, released the following memo suggesting the race is not easily predicted by polls. He sees the race tightening and says it will be "too close to call" by Election Day next week.

TO: McCain Strategy Team

FROM: Bill McInturff, Lead Pollster, McCain-Palin 2008; Partner, Public Opinion Strategies

RE: State of the Race and Ballot Position

DATE: October 28, 2008


First, let's be clear: This is a hard election to "predict."

The historic nature of the candidates on both tickets, the huge influx of unregulated money by the Obama campaign, the dour public mood, and the unique level of voter interest all suggest an historic level of turn-out, not witnessed in over 40 years.

Sen. Barack Obama's campaign counted ten different themes used by the McCain campaign today alone -- none of which were about the economy. While the Obama campaign calls this "flailing," almost anyone would agree that pushing so many messages at once goes against all lessons of modern political campaigning.

The entire memo from the Obama campaign is below:

It turns out Sen. John McCain may not have properly vetted "Joe the Plumber" -- the man he brought up more than 20 times in last night's presidential debate.

As the New York Times reports, the man in question "may run a plumbing business but he is not a licensed plumber. His full name is Samuel J. Wurzelbacher. And he owes a bit in back taxes."

"Joe the Plumber" probably now wishes he never had his 15 minutes of fame.

Update: It turns out Joe may also be related to Charles Keating.

TO: Interested Parties
FR: Bill Burton, Obama-Biden Campaign National Press Secretary
RE: John McCain's plan to "whip" "That One's" "you-know-what"
DA: October 15, 2008

In tonight's debate, Chuck Todd of NBC News says, McCain needs to "figure out how to disqualify Barack Obama." Time Magazine's Mark Halperin writes, "McCain will have to produce a major memorable moment." The NY Daily News says the debate is "do-or-die for McCain's campaign." However they put it, people agree, John McCain needs a game-changer.

Not mentioned by many pundits is that Sen. John McCain did not once refer to himself as a "maverick" during last night's presidential debate.

Maybe the jokes were too much.

As we prepare for Tuesday night's presidential debate, Nielsen releases some interesting demographics:

Sixty-one percent of all U.S. households watched at least one of the two 2008 election debates aired so far.

On average, 41% of all homes watched the V.P. debate last Thursday -- up one-third from the first Presidential debate the previous Friday night, which reached an average of 31% of all households.

Of all households, 39% watched neither debate, while 30.3% tuned in to both.  11.2% of all homes tuned in to the presidential debate only, and 19.5% tuned in to just the V.P. debate. 

Both debates drew audiences made up mostly of white viewers with higher levels of income ($100,000+) and education (4+ years of college).

Older viewers (age 55+) made up the largest portion of the TV audiences for both debates (42% - 46%).  However, the Biden-Palin V.P. debate (median age: 52) drew a slightly larger portion of younger viewers than the first Obama-McCain debate (median age: 54).

Homes headed by African Americans made up a larger portion of the presidential debate audience (14.0%) than the V.P. debate audience (12.3%).  African American homes normally account for 12.2% of all U.S. TV households.

Overall, Hispanic viewers were less likely to watch the debates.  Hispanic households, which account for 11.1%  of all TV households in the U.S., made up just 6.3% to 6.5% of the combined audience for the two debates.

Last week, we noted Sen. John McCain's shift to running almost entirely negative ads.

But Marc Ambinder notes the downside: "One worry for Republicans is that McCain has already gone too negative too quickly; you never pull out the strongest punches against your opponent until the very end; it's hard to get tougher than the kindergarten ad... or over-the-top statements about Obama not being fit to lead."