How Obama could still lose:

1. Although unlikely, he could stumble badly. E.g. another “cling to” comment is made or surfaces.

2. His surrogates or advisers could make a “bone-headed” statement. I will never forget hearing on CNN the Friday before the 2004 election that Theresa Hines Kerry picked the lock box she had been placed in for most of the campaign and said publicly “I don’t think Laura Bush has ever had a real job”. I emailed Patty, “its over.”

Murtha came close yesterday saying his constituents were “rednecks.”

3. Overconfidence. The poll that counts are the ones tallied at the end of the day on November 4th. I have heard so many people say “there’s no way he won’t win Ohio,” when the polls say different (see below). Also, I have seen actual votes on election day be as much as 9% off of the last poll taken.

4. Osama Bin Laden makes a cameo appearance the Friday before the election. This happened in 2004 and some credit it with pushing the election to Bush. It is one of the reasons I felt Wes Clark or Jim Webb would have been better VP choices for Obama. The Colin Powell endorsement and McCain’s erratic behavior somewhat mitigates his advantage here, but for enough voters in a few big states, this could still be a game changer.

5. The typical trend is for undecideds to follow the latest polls. In most, if not all, competitive primaries, the undecideds did not break for Obama.

6. The McCain “socialist,” “spread the wealth around,” “why should I work harder just to pay more taxes,” etc. ads may actually be working. Slate reports today that recent polls show a trend towards McCain in Ohio, Indiana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina and Virginia. Here are a few graphs to illustrate that point. Although the West Virginia one clearly has a flawed data point when Obama was up by 8 points, I do think this is somewhat accurate in that the undecideds in some states have not been terribly engaged or educated and are susceptable to these kind of arguments. I have been surprised by the number of “man on the street interviews” I do (e.g. if I have a customer service rep on the phone from a swing state, I always ask them who is going to win) where people say “I don’t like either one of them.”