Jake Silverstein, Paul Burka, and Eileen Smith discuss Tuesday night’s town hall debate, what’s at stake, and why height matters.

1. Pollster.com: Obama 320, McCain 163, Toss-Up 55
2. electoral-vote.com: Obama 349, McCain 174, Toss-Up 15
3. 270towin.com: Obama 243, McCain 174, Toss-Up 121
4. Real Clear Politics: Obama 264, McCain 163, Toss-Up 111

Today’s swing states: Nevada, Missouri, Indiana, Virginia, North Carolina

What a difference a day makes. Ohio, Florida, New Hampshire, and Colorado all move out of toss-up to Obama in the Pollster maps, which has the most up-to-date information and trend estimates (hence why I rank them first).

To read the guide to electoral maps, click here.

The pressure is on for McCain after his poll numbers dropped significantly following the financial crisis, which, despite the passage of the cure-all bail-out bill, is still in crisis. If you don’t believe me, just ask the Dow.

The latest NBC/WSJ poll has Obama up by six, 49 percent to 43 percent. Meanwhile McCain is quickly losing ground in toss-up states and finding himself on defense in traditional red states like Virginia and North Carolina.

The debate tonight is the one that McCain’s been waiting for since he challenged Obama at the beginning of the campaign to a series of town hall appearances. Let’s see how McCain performs in Boy’s Town.

[CNN]

Et tu, North Carolina?

Obama, meanwhile, has been campaigning in NC for the past three weekends.

“Despite the pundits, despite the prognosticators, despite the cynicism,” Obama said, “we are right here in the hunt in North Carolina. We can win at the top of the ballot in North Carolina. And we win at the bottom of the ballot in North Carolina. We can win in the eastern part of the state and in the western part. We can elect a new Democratic governor here in North Carolina and we can elect a new U.S. senator here in North Carolina.”

McCain aides privately consider this a must-win state. But publicly, they are accusing North Carolina of being “150 percent in the tank” for Obama.

[Politico]

One of the key reasons Senator Obama beat Senator Clinton in the primaries was because they ran a campaign to win the most delegates. Unlike Senator Clinton (who brazenly declared the race would be over by Feb. 5) Senator Obama and his campaign team planned a delegate strategy for victory. Ultimately, by creating a strategy that aimed to maximize his lead in the only metric that mattered – the delegate count – Senator Obama pulled off one of the best executed upsets in Democratic primary history.

Therefore, in order to track the Presidential race, I believe it makes more sense to look at Electoral College maps (since the electoral vote count is the only metric that matters) than national polls. Otherwise, we may think someone is doing well because of national polling, but may still actually trail in the Electoral College (See: John Kerry).

For this reason, here, is a rundown of the better electoral map websites, ranked in my favorite order because, well, I’m the one writing this. If Eileen permits, I’ll have a very short post every day that has the numbers from each of these four sites, as well as any pertinent major news on state level polls.

Enjoy.

1. Pollster.com (Obama 260, McCain 163, Toss Up 115)

First and foremost, I think Pollster.com has the simplest, best methodology for creating their electoral map. Instead of averaging state polls, they use “trend estimates” to create their map. I’ll let them explain:

Here is a way to think about this: suppose the last 5 polls in a race are 25, 27, 29, 31 and 33. Which is a better estimate of where the race stands today? 29 (the mean) or 33 (the local trend)?

They also assign states to either campaign based on where the polls lie within confidence intervals (95%, 68-95%, etc). I ask that you trust me that this is the best way to do it.

Additionally, when you roll over their maps you can click on any individual state and go to a page that has the line graph of the state’s polling history. There is also a simple chart with all of the latest polls, and links to the PDFs of those polls. Finally, it is very easy to pull their images off the site and either e-mail them around or use them in your own research, materials, or posts.

Quite simply, it’s the most logical, most interactive, and most transparent website for mapping out the Electoral College.

2. Electoral-vote.com (Obama 329, McCain 194, Toss Up 15)

A close second, electoral-vote.com shares many of the same positive characteristics as Pollster. Specifically, I love their chart that shows “this day in 2004” so we can compare/contrast with the last Presidential race. Like Pollster, you can click on any state and get a line graph that shows all the latest polls. They also have a clear list of the states that Obama or McCain are picking up since 2004.

What puts them in second is that they don’t link to recent state polls right under their line chart – you have to go to a separate page that, quite frankly, is not very easy to navigate.

With that exception, they are very interactive, easy to navigate, and worth a look. So you know, states are toss-up if they are a statistical tie.

3. 270towin.com (Obama 260, McCain 163, Toss Up 115)

270towin.com is, like Pollster, excellent in being accountable in how they get their numbers. They also have the best historical links/information for any state, and their interactive map allows you to click and switch states to red, blue, or toss up. As you do, the site automatically updates the “likelihood” of any campaign winning. Also, they automatically generate “paths to victory” once a certain number of states are leaning towards one of the two candidates.

Those excellent positives, though, don’t cancel out a minor flaw: you have access to state polls by clicking on the menu bar, then finding the state you want – as opposed to just clicking directly on the state from the electoral map, as you can with the first two sites I talked about.

That being said, it is another excellent electoral map.

4. Real Clear Politics (Obama 264, McCain 163, Toss Up 111)

I know a lot of people love RCP. I think they suffer from content overload – first of all, the map isn’t on the front page; instead, approximately 4,000 links to other areas of the website are on the front page.

My other concern with RCP is that they don’t talk about how/where their numbers are from, or how they assign the statistics. I don’t doubt that they are accurate – as you can tell, their numbers are almost identical to Pollster and 270towin. But open accountability, especially with something as controversial as polls, is important.

Those concerns aside, their overwhelming content can be fun. Their Intrade statistics are fun to look at, and once you get to their electoral map, it is very interactive. Overall, RCP is another solid source for Electoral College maps.

Today’s swing states: Nevada, Colorado, Missouri, Indiana, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, New Hampshire

Overall, Obama’s map has solidified since last week. We probably won’t see much movement in state polls until the end of the week, when the reaction to Tuesday’s debate has had time to filter to state polls.

They unleashed the attack dog in the form of Sarah Palin at Thursday’s debate. Instead of articulating a Palin/McCain administration’s specific plans on issues such as Iraq, the economy, and health care, she pounced in her cutesy, charming, moosehunter-girl-next-door way. (My favorite sound bite from her: “Your plan is a white flag of surrender in Iraq.”)

As reported over the weekend, both McCain and Palin (but especially Palin) will attack Obama’s character by resurrecting his (once-close ties) with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and (his loose ties) to former Weather Underground radical Bill Ayers. Just when you think a chapter’s been closed, they reopen the whole gosh-darn book. The question is, are the American people sick of this type of personal attack as they try to save their homes from foreclosure, or are they ready for another round?

The Obama campaign’s response to these character attacks? How about with… character attacks? Dredge up the old Keating 5 scandal in the late ’80s which apparently brought us to the financial crisis we face today. Makes perfect sense. (See Burka’s post on this.)

If you asked the average voter about Charles Keating or Bill Ayers, they probably couldn’t tell you who they are. They might, however, want to know how they’re going to get their jobs back.

Kelly J Shackelford, Esq. serves as Chief Counsel of the Liberty Legal Institute (1997-present). LLI was founded by Mr. Shackelford as an organization that fights for religious liberties and protects first amendment rights in the courts in Texas and nationwide. As an expert in constitutional law, Mr. Shackelford has argued before the U.S. Supreme Court and Texas Supreme Court in addition to serving as co-counsel in numerous other U.S. Supreme Court cases.

Recently, LLI has been involved in numerous cases, including Van Orden v. Perry, where Mr. Shackelford assisted in heading Amici and oral argument preparation for Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott in his Ten Commandments Case before the U.S. Supreme Court. Mr. Shackelford has assisted the current U.S. Solicitor General as well as former U.S. Solicitor General Ted Olson in Supreme Court cases, including the victorious American Library Association v. U.S. This case ended in complete victory successfully protecting the right of public libraries across the country to filter pornography from public access computers.

Mr. Shackelford has testified before the U.S. House, U.S Senate and the Texas Legislature. In the Legislative arena, Mr. Shackelford played a major role in drafting and passing the Texas Marriage Amendment and numerous other bills protecting life, family and religious freedom.

Why the devil is a Texan — and a Texas-based organization — messing with parochial Alaskan affairs?

In a word, no.

Sure, Sarah Palin got her groove back last night after a couple weeks of subpar media interviews. She delivered some sound bites, she smiled, she had the right tone, and she was able to hold her own with Joe Biden (who was remarkably restrained given some of her non-responses). One of her more outrageous attack lines was that the Obama/Biden plan for withdrawal of troops from Iraq constitutes a “white flag of surrender.”

While I understand that part of the role of a VP nominee is to be an attack dog for the presidential nominee, Palin is much more comfortable and convincing when she discusses middle America, which propelled her to insta-stardom following the convention. The danger for Palin in a more formal setting like the debate is sounding a little too folksy, as she did in her opening.

“You know, I think a good barometer here, as we try to figure out has this been a good time or a bad time in America’s economy, is go to a kid’s soccer game on Saturday, and turn to any parent there on the sideline and ask them, ‘How are you feeling about the economy?’”

Followed by a nod to that great American hero… Joe Sixpack.

I believe this is the first vice presidential or presidential debate that a candidate has winked at the camera not once, not twice, but three times. Some of her down-home folksy phrases would’ve played well at a mayoral debate in Wasilla, but on a national stage for the second highest office in the country, they seemed, shall we say, peculiar.

• Darn right
• Bless their hearts (referring to the oil companies she took on while Governor)
• It’s a toxic mess, really (referring to the economy)
• The chant is “drill baby drill.”
• Constant reference to Obama and Biden as “you guys.”
• You know, government, just get out of my way.
• I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and God bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right?
• My brother, who I think is the best schoolteacher in the year, and here’s a shout-out to all those third graders at Gladys Wood Elementary School, you get extra credit for watching the debate.

Not to mention my favorite Reaganesque response by Palin:

“Say it ain’t so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again. You preferenced (sic) your whole comment with the Bush administration. Now doggone it, let’s look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future.”

I mean, seriously? Dead ringer for Goldie Hawn in Protocol.

One of the more surreal moments of the night, though, was when Palin and Biden were asked about the role of vice president, and whether they would follow the Dick Cheney model of expanding the responsibilities of the office.

Palin: “I’m thankful the Constitution would allow a bit more authority given to the vice president if that vice president so chose to exert it in working with the Senate… Our founding fathers were very wise there in allowing through the Constitution much flexibility there in the office of the vice president.”

Biden: “Vice President Cheney has been the most dangerous vice president we’ve had probably in American history. The idea he doesn’t realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United States, that’s the Executive Branch. He works in the Executive Branch. He should understand that. Everyone should understand that.”

I thought Biden’s performance was crisp and concise, and he managed to reel himself in countless times by flashing those porcelain veneers when he could have attacked Palin. And I thought they both did a good job of bringing in the importance of family at the end, marked by their own personal experiences. They both had modest upbringings. They both have been hit with challenges — Biden being a single father after his wife and baby died in a car crash; Palin having a special-needs child.

My main quarrel with the debate is that it failed to address specifics regarding their plans for healthcare, the economy, and education. Social Security didn’t even merit a mention. So hopefully the next two presidential debates will give us some idea of how they’re going to implement programs during a financial crisis.

In the end, do VP debates matter? Probably not. Palin had the most to lose, and could have possibly done damage to the ticket, if she had given a lackluster performance. But she didn’t. Biden didn’t all of a sudden turn into Rick Lazio, and there were more than a few opportunities for that to happen.

What’s most important for Palin’s future political career is that she was able to perform pretty well under the serious pressure of a debate against an experienced veteran. If McCain doesn’t win, she could be back in four years, with more experience under her belt and political grooming. Then the GOP just might get the rising star they were looking for.

[Full Transcript]

Forgetting Sarah Palin (10-02-2008)

Eileen Smith talks with Paul Burka and Jake Silverstein about the VP debate, and the perils of acting too smart, or playing too dumb.