Political Junkies Place

3 Days to go: DC, Cambridge & Brookline Wisepeople + early voting stats

Slate.com forecast:

Obama:   311

McCain   142

Tossup    85

I spent Monday in DC with Year Up, several partners from Venture Philanthropy Partners (including former Clinton Administration officials), Echo Ditto and also visited the local Obama HQ.  Everyone I talked to was either “nervous” or “cautiously optimistic.”

On Friday afternoon, I stopped by Social Sphere and dropped in on Jonathan Chavez, their Co-Founder and Director of Analytics.  Jonathan is one of the most insightful guys I know and his take on Tuesday’s outcome was, “It’s all down to get out the vote and the ground game. If McCain’s team can’t get Joe the Plumber – the centerpiece of a rally – to the rally on time, how are they going to get people to the polls?”

Last night Tricker Treating in my Brookline hood, I ran into Alan Khazei, founder of City Year and Be the Change and Eric Schwartz, founder of Citizens Schools.  Both of them have way more Presidential campaign experience than I.  I mentioned the impact of the RNC direct mail, American Israeli vote, bad move pushing back the World Series for PA and Fla residents for the Obamamercial, etc.  They are very confident Obama will win.

Only new data I have on this “travel soccer,  travel play rehearsal, clean up the dead tomato plants” Saturday are the data on the early vote in several states:

31% of registered voters in Georgia had voted by end of day yesterday

33% of registered voters in North Carolina had voted by the end of day yesterday

30% of registered voters in Florida had voted by the end of the day yesterday

This is somewhat of a useless stat (not quite what the Dodgers called a “non-stat”), because I don’t have the state by state breakdown, but according to CNN the exit polls of early voters show 45% Obama and 38% McCain.

I thought it would have been more slanted to Obama given Jonathan’s comments.

Tags: early voters, ground game

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for iphone users – get Political Junkies on your phone

Thanks to Jason Cianchette of Liguid Wireless and Matt Wisely of editme, you can now get Political Junkies Place on your iphone in case you will be in the field for the next few days!  Here’s how:

1. Go online from your phone

2. Press “+” at the bottom of the screen

3. Press “Add to Home Screen”

4. Look for this very cool icon to appear:

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American Israeli’s Vote 3:1 McCain

Bill Hinchey just called about a story he heard on the news that something like 40,000 American’s living in Israel voted yesteday and exit polls showed them 75% voting for McCain. Here’s a graph from a thorough story from the LA Times Blog Babylon & Beyond.

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Halloween Political Cartoon

Thanks to David Feinberg!

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He’s back – Rev. Wright in Republican Ad

As predicted, Rev Wright has appeared in a last minute Republican ad.  This one paid for by the “National Republican Trust PAC.” I am particularly senstive to the impact of last minute attack ads, as they may have been partly responsible for my fathers loss in 2000. We were up 3% in the polls on the Friday before the election and his opponent ran a particularly damaging ad with clips from a “60 Minute” roasting.  We lost by 2%.  They ran the ad with incredibly high GRP’s the last 4 days of the campaign.

Also another example of RNC direct mail. Both of these ads are targeting the religious right, among other groups. That group was largely responsible for Kerry’s loss in Florida in 2004.

Latest Florida Polls:

Tags: attack ads, rev wright, reverend wright, RNC

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Thoughts on Obamamercial after sleeping on it

I have been heads down this morning and not had a chance to see what smarter political analysts are saying about last night’s 30 minute Obama Infomercial, but here’s my gut:

After sleeping on it, I thought the Obamamercial was beautiful and touching, but will not move the undecided’s one point. Money would have been better spent:

1. Directly and clearly addressing the RNC/McCain attacks e.g. “Obama will let the government take over health care.” “Joe the plumber’s taxes will increase.” Etc.
2. Having surrogates like Colin Powell, Les Clark, Warren Buffet address the experience issue.  Even Newt Gingrich said the Powell endorsement took “the experience question off the table.”

Although I have not seen the data, I have heard several pundits claim the undecideds are mostly uninvolved people. If true this would support the theory that the polls are moving to McCain because they are responding to things like the RNC terrorist direct mail or some email about Michelle Obama spending $400 on lobster. No way they would watch a 30 minute infomercial.

Tags: ads, infomercial, Obama

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Almost the ad I would have made for McCain

This McCain ad ran immediately after the Obamamerical.

I will write more about this after the election if Obama wins, but I have felt all along that the best way to attack Obama would be to say something incredibly positive about all that he has accomplished, but then state the facts that he has only X years as a community organizer, Y as an Illinois State Senator and Z as a US Senator. I would go even further to say something like “someday Barack Obama will be qualified to be president and he probably will be president, but right now, he doesn’t have the experience we need in these challenging times.” I would use a neutral, factual tone for both voice and music and let the facts speak for themselves.

A friend of mine close to Joe Trippi told me during the pre-primary period (when was that, about 50 months ago?) that Edwards focus groups and other research were finding that the majority of those they talked to wanted Obama to be president some day, but not yet.

This ad comes close, using the word “yet” at the end, but it is way too negative in tone.

Tags: ads, experience, McCain

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Potentially great Obama ad fails the “Ray Charles” test

ANR just sent me this new Obama add called “His Choice” and it is driving me crazy.  Why?  It fails the “Beethoven Test.”

Let me explain.  When I reviewed our TV advertising for AIR MILES, the agency knew it had to pass what I called the “Ray Charles” and “Beethoven” tests.  I realized that real people (e.g. customers. voters) would most likely not focus on our ads with the lazer like focus that our marketing and agency partners did (e.g. “Craig, make sure you look at the guy in the hat on the right side of the screen. We had him raise his eyebrows skeptically at the end of the spot!.”) Many would be doing something else while the ad was playing, so it had to deliver the main point with both the sound off (Beethoven) and if someone was not looking at the screen and only hearing the audio (Ray Charles.)

Less effective than it could have been, IMHO.

Tags: ads, ineffective ads, Obama

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RNC “terrorist” mailing – Is this what is moving the polls to McCain?

In a previous post, I wrote about the effectiveness of the 2004 Bush/Rove strategy to keep the “air war” (e.g convention prime time speakers, TV ads) positive while using microtargeted direct mail to deliver the hugely negative “gays, guns and abortion” attacks.

Here’s one of the mailers they are using this year.  Yes, that’s a picture of a 747 flying into a building.  You can find more if you Google “RNC mailer”

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David Gergen Fan Club Part II – Joe the plumber on Obama and Israel

Just back form DC and heard David Gergen on CNN:

“I thought last night we had reached the limits of absurdity by talking yet one more time about the topic of Sarah Palin’s wardrobe, but today they went even higher with Joe the Plumber with John McCain offering views about Israel.”

Here’s the video of Joe the Plumber:

Tags: fox, fox news, Israel, Jewish Vote, joe the plumber, McCain, Obama

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