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The race between Gov. Christine Gregoire (D) and Dino Rossi (“G.O.P. Party”) remains only slightly clearer than mud today with the release of a new Strategic Vision poll. The poll shows Gregoire leading Rossi by +2% (50% to 48%).

That makes four +2% leads in a row, as Gregoire’s led by +2% in the three previous polls as well: a Washington Poll poll (50% to 48%), a SurveyUSA poll (50% to 48%), and a Strategic Vision poll (49% to 47%).

Before that, Gregoire held a +6.4% (51.4% to 45.0%) lead in the previous Washington Poll poll taken from 18-Oct to 26-Oct.

The recent polling shows Gregoire with a small, but consistent, lead in the weeks leading up to the election:

In fact, Gregoire has led in all eight polls taken since mid-October. The last time Rossi held the lead was in mid-September.

The new Strategic Vision poll also shows Obama leading by +15% (55% to 40%) in the state. (The poll of 800 likely voters was taken between 31-Oct and 02-Nov, and has a margin of error of ±3%.)

Obama	McCain
100.0% probability of winning	0.0% probability of winning
Mean of 362 electoral votes	Mean of 176 electoral votes

There are lots and lots of new polls today, so this analysis is the first of two or three I’ll offer today. There were 34 new polls in 15 states released this morning. The polls show a little more tightening up of the race, but Obama maintains a strong lead.

Yesterday’s analysis showed Sen. Barack Obama leading Sen. John McCain by 366 to 172 electoral votes (on average). Today, after 100,000 simulated elections, Obama wins all 100,000. Obama receives (on average) 362 to McCain’s 176 electoral votes—McCain makes a net gain of four electoral votes. If the election had been held today, instead of tomorrow, Obama would have a 100.0% probability of winning.

Detailed results for this analysis are available at Hominid Views.

Methods are described in the FAQ. The most recent version of this analysis can be found on this page.

In their headlong race to the bottom, which will the Seattle Times shed faster?

It’s a tough competition among Seattle’s daily papers, what with the Times’s Harvard hit piece on Darcy Burner and the P-I’s laughable front-page analysis today of early voting for governor (which is entirely pegged on extrapolating King County’s lower mail voting rate thus far than other counties without accounting for the fact that we’re also one of only two counties with polling place voting on Tuesday).

But the “honor” of worst smear jobs of this dismal campaign season in our local papers has to go to the P-I’s Joel Connelly for his relentless series of factually challenged hit pieces on I-1000, reprised today. (And no, it doesn’t deserve to be linked to. Find it yourself, if you have the stomach.)

Connelly has a right to his faith-based opinion on I-1000, and to express it. I would respect that. (Goodness knows, I’ve had enough public opinions that friends of mine have disagreed with over the years.)

However, he does not have a right to use his public soapbox for a seemingly endless litany of dishonest smear jobs. His jihad on this initiative (religious imagery intentional) has dramatically lowered my opinion of his integrity.

I’ve been terminally ill; I spent two long years sliding toward my death, including three separate comas, over two dozen surgeries, and untold nausea and pain. I was fortunate enough to survive it, but I sure remember the experience. With all the ameliorative care in the world, it was still awful, and now that I’m a couple decades older and more brittle, it will be worse next time. Maybe I’ll endure it again, maybe I won’t. That’s my choice. As someone personally affected by this initiative, I don’t simply disagree with Connelly; I find his work on this, his assumptions about the motivations and decision-making capacity of the terminally ill, his eagerness to impose his own religious and moral code on my body, and his willingness to put me and my family through a living end-of-life hell so that he can feel a little better to be personally offensive – and it takes a lot to offend me.

Sad.  I can only imagine how much it would have meant to her and Obama for her to have lived to see her grandson elected president.

It is with great sadness that we announce that our grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, has died peacefully after a battle with cancer. She was the cornerstone of our family, and a woman of extraordinary accomplishment, strength, and humility. She was the person who encouraged and allowed us to take chances. She was proud of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren and left this world with the knowledge that her impact on all of us was meaningful and enduring. Our debt to her is beyond measure.

No doubt the hard core righties will call it a pre-election day stunt.

Obama wins, Stefan does not stop by DL to share a pitcher with me.

This is a weird story in the P-I. If everything turns out pretty much like 2004, and not as many people vote in the Puget Sound region as elsewhere, Rossi will indeed win. Or whatever the point was.

I’m not saying the story should not have been written, it’s just kind of odd to speculate and then use the word “analysis” about what might happen based on how many ballots have already come back in vote by mail counties. It would have been more straightforward to just discuss the likely turnout in different counties while noting briefly who won those counties in 2004.

If you go to say, Pollster.com and gaze at polls in the Washington gubernatorial race long enough, you might conclude that the race is a statistical dead heat.

Another factor to speculate about would be the effect of cell phones on polling data. I honestly don’t know how to gauge that, and I especially don’t know how to gauge that in the governor’s race. That could break either way.

Both campaigns seem to have large turnout operations, according to the traditional media. My crystal ball is down at the music shop having “God Bless the USA” installed to replace “The Internationale,” but the race for governor really does seem to close to call.

Since I’m down here in Clark County, I’ll leave the speculating about the Puget Sound region to those who know that area better. Since Clark County is often mentioned as a key part of any Rossi victory scenario, I’d just point out that Rossi only received 52.75% of the vote here in 2004, hardly a huge margin and very similar to the amount George W. Bush received.

It’s hard for me to imagine how Rossi could do much better this year with an incredibly unpopular national Republican ticket. A narrow Gregoire victory in Clark County, as normal people realize she is a steady and qualified governor in tough times, wouldn’t surprise me either. Remember, we don’t live in your Puget Sound media universe. People here call the elections office asking why Gordon Smith isn’t on their ballot. I kid you not.

Sure, the Rossi forces attacked Gregoire relentlessly for a thought crime about an income tax, but that factually flimsy if politically effective charge should be offset by Democratic enthusiasm. But I’m just speculating.

And if you believe what you read here, we’re not going to know the outcome tomorrow night anyhow.

Gregoire wins statewide 53-46-1! Or not!

A couple weeks ago it appeared Darcy Burner might be cruising to victory.  A number of polls showed her with a small but substantive lead amongst all voters, and a comfortable lead with those who had already cast their ballots.  And then the Seattle Times decided to step in and play kingmaker.

No doubt Dave Reichert’s bullshit “Harvard Hoax” ad, propped up by hundreds of thousands of dollars of illegal loans from his media buyer, is having an effect—Darcy’s campaign has received a number of calls from confused voters asking if Darcy actually graduated from Harvard, or even has a college degree at all.  The Times and their collaborators on talk radio took confusion over the unusual wording of Harvard degrees—essentially a niggling complaint over a lack of specificity—and knowingly gave Reichert the ammunition to lie to voters about Darcy’s extraordinary education.  And it may be working.

Essentially, if Dave Reichert wins this election, it will be a huge victory for the Seattle Times and the power of the corporate media to manipulate public opinion, and a devastating loss for those of us in the netroots who have put so much time, energy and passion into electing a qualified and competent representative in WA-08.

Please don’t let that happen.

Darcy needs our help now more than ever, and it’s time for us to leave everything on the table.  The campaign is launching a new ad today, refuting Reichert’s lies, and she needs to put every cent she can behind it to set the record straight with confused voters.  But unlike Reichert, Darcy has to pay as she goes, so if you haven’t already given everything you can, please go to Darcy’s website and contribute now.

And if you have more time than money, you can still contribute to Darcy’s campaign by volunteering today and tomorrow, knocking on doors, making phone calls, and helping with her Get Out The Vote efforts.

For the third election in a row, and with the tacit cooperation of the press, Dave Reichert is closing out his campaign by smearing his opponent.  It is time to show that people power can trump the entrenched interests of our state’s media-political complex.

I’m no great fan of Barack Obama. His election will be historic, and he will provide both an inspiration and a desperately new face for America to the world. And he’s smart and competent. That said, he’s proven his corporate centrism on far too many issues (including, most recently, his enthusiastic backing of a $700 billion that I suspect we’ll soon come to widely acknowledge as a criminal looting of the treasury) for me to be much impressed. And Joe Biden, from his whoring for credit card companies to his war on drugs mania to his disastrous plan to partition Iraq, is a neat encapsulation of what is vile about many Senate Democrats.

But it doesn’t matter. In Washington state, our electoral votes are a foregone conclusion. The presidential race is strictly a spectator sport here. And, as Darryl has been demonstrating nightly, one with a pretty much foregone conclusion.

Similarly, I’m not all that worked up about this blog’s special obsession over the past two years, Burner/Reichert. Darcy would make a great Congressperson, and Reichert is a lousy one; I really hope she wins. But it’s not my district.

Where I (and most of us) will be most affected and can make a difference is in the race that concerns me most right now: the race for governor.

Four years ago, I did not support Christine Gregoire. I found Dino Rossi repellant, but after eight years of the execrable Gary Locke, I also had no love for yet another do-nothing centrist Democrat. I wound up voting for (and publicly endorsing) the Libertarian candidate, Ruth Bennett.

Once the election dust settled (without the help of my vote), though, a funny and very rare thing happened: I was won over by a politician who did a much, much better job than I expected.

Mind you, there’s still quite a bit I don’t agree with Christine Gregoire on. (And sorry, but if we can mock Sarah Palin’s faux-folksiness, I’m also not on board with the calculated effort to rebrand “Christine” as “Chris.”) In particular, Gregoire’s handling of the Alaskan Way Viaduct controversy has been both ham-fisted and wrong. But generally, Gregoire has been exactly what Locke was not: a leader who gets things done. She’s brought the legislature to the table and helped hammer out compromises on several key contentious issues. Her fiscal and executive management of the state, contrary to Rossi’s propaganda, has been exemplary. She balanced the budget, got voter-mandated education monies funded (unlike Locke, who simply ignored the voters); she used economic good times to invest in needed expenditures that had been slashed under Locke; and she also set aside money for the inevitable slow times that are now upon us. Does anyone doubt that, if elected, Rossi would have done none of this, electing instead — just like his party’s national leaders — to use the economic good times to simply give tax breaks to the wealthy?

Gregoire also deserves credit for respecting voters — not only by getting education funded, but also (much as it galls me) by pushing for enactment of Tim Eyman’s successful measures. The contrast couldn’t be clearer: Dino Rossi has shown time and again his contempt for voters, from his flagrant violation of campaign finance laws and his idiotic party label (“prefers GOP”) deception and his cynical effort to exploit Obama’s coattails to his fantastic (in the literal sense of the word) transportation plan to his consistent efforts to avoid fessing up to policy stances, especially on social issues, that are wildly out of step with this state’s electorate.

Even so, Rossi would not be making this race close if Gregoire’s story had been told effectively. Instead, she has proven herself in two campaigns now to be as bad a CEO for her campaign as she is good as a CEO for the state. Over the last 18 months I was repeatedly assured, by people who should know, that Gregoire’s people understood that they’d run a dreadful campaign in 2004, and that it would be fixed this time. Instead. Rossi — with an able assist from this state’s ever-pliant media — has skated by on his deceptions and a blizzard of negative ads that, until recently, have mostly gone unrefuted in any meaningful sense. Rossi has been allowed to define Gregoire and set the agenda for this campaign, an almost inconceivable feat given that Gregoire’s the incumbent. Even though Rossi is, if anything, even more repellant and dishonest than he was in 2004, Gregoire’s campaign incompetence could easily cost her the election, and us a very good governor.

But every poll shows this race within polling’s margin of error — which it certainly was in 2004 — and so even though many of us have already voted, this is one race where the next 24 hours could make all the difference. Get out the vote. Talk up the governor’s race among your friends, co-workers, relatives. Don’t let Dino Rossi’s dishonest and illegal campaigning carry the day. If it does, it not only establishes an awful precedent for how statewide campaigns are to be run, but it sets us up for a long four years in our state, years in which many people will needlessly suffer from Rossi’s budget priorities. And it will cost us the best governor we’ve had in ages.

Obama	McCain
100.0% probability of winning	0.0% probability of winning
Mean of 366 electoral votes	Mean of 172 electoral votes

Yesterday’s analysis showed Sen. Barack Obama leading Sen. John McCain by (on average) 369 to 169 electoral votes.

There were 18 new polls from 14 states that add into today’s analysis. The polls show some races tightening up slightly, and McCain gets the better of it.

Now, after 100,000 simulated elections, Obama wins ’em all. Obama receives (on average) 366 to McCain’s 172 electoral votes—a gain of three votes for McCain since yesterday. The simulation results still suggest that Obama would win an election held today with 100.0% probability.

The long term trends in this race can be seen from a series of elections simulated every seven days using polls from 02 Mar 2008 to 02 Nov 2008, each time including polls from the preceding seven days (FAQ):

Detailed results for this analysis are available at Hominid Views.

Methods are described in the FAQ. The most recent version of this analysis can be found on this page.

In a nation that impeached a president for lying about a blow job, and in a state where confusion over the wording of a Harvard diploma qualifies as a front page scandal, you’d think our local media would jump on evidence that Dino Rossi perjured himself just days before the gubernatorial election, right?  Well… not so much.

Two new depositions of Master Builders Association board members were released over the weekend, and so far our local media has turned a blind eye, despite the fact their testimony directly contradicts that given by Rossi, and sheds new light on the Republican’s role in the ever expanding Buildergate scandal.  And no doubt the most damaging testimony relates to a phone call Rossi made to MBA President Doug Barnes in May of 2007:

LOWNEY: How long was your conversation with Mr. Barnes.

ROSSI: I don’t recall.

LOWNEY: Do you recall talking about any financial contributions.

ROSSI: That, I don’t think so. No, I don’t recall that.

LOWNEY: Did you talk about the 2008 governor’s race?

ROSSI: No.

Well, that seems pretty cut an dried. Amongst the many things Rossi couldn’t recall during his deposition was any conversation about financial contributions. But when asked whether he even talked about the 2008 governor’s race during his telephone call with Barnes, Rossi definitively replies: “No.”

Unfortunately for Rossi, that’s not the way Barnes recalls the conversation:

LOWNEY: And what other issues did you speak with him about?

BARNES: Discussed the latest wedge with BIAW’s approach to us on this funding for the governor’s race.

LOWNEY: And what did he say about that particular issue?

BARNES: Mr. Rossi didn’t have specific — he listened and talked with me about what our differences were. There was no real: Okay, here’s a conclusion, here’s an answer, here’s a — it was more just listening: What are the issues that you have?

Huh. So Rossi claims they didn’t talk about the 2008 governor’s race, while Barnes says they not only did, but they even talked about funding for it. And just as important, Rossi “listened,” which contradicts his insistence that he had absolutely no idea, during the spring of 2007, that the BIAW was raising money for the governor’s race:

LOWNEY: So in 2007 in the April, May and June time frame, did you have any idea that the BIAW was trying to create a pot of money for the 2008 governor’s race?

ROSSI: I know they were trying to come together on supporting all candidates across the state that were pro small business candidates. … It was for supporting all small business candidates, Republicans and Democrats alike, and in a very general sense.

Okay, Rossi didn’t really insist that he had no knowledge the BIAW was raising money for the governor’s race, he just kinda sorta implied it by claiming the effort was for all pro small business candidates… not that legally, that is any excuse if he knew that one of those candidates might be himself.  But we’ll get to the legal stuff later; for the moment, let’s go back to Barnes’ deposition, where he further details his conversation with Rossi.

LOWNEY: And how did you describe this latest wedge issue to Mr. Rossi?

BARNES: I said it was another example of BIAW – kind of “my way or the highway” is how I typically described it – and that I had two or three major objections with what they were trying to do and that it was way too early; there’s no need for us to even be having this discussion at this point in time. And that was the extent of that.

LOWNEY: And what do you mean, “it was too early”?

BARNES: They were trying to raise funds for an election that was going to happen 15, 18 months from now.

When Rossi is asked if he knew the BIAW was raising money for the governor’s race, he prevaricates; when he’s asked if he even discussed the 2008 governor’s race during his conversation with Barnes, he says “no.”  Indeed, since the day this scandal first broke, Rossi has insisted that his numerous phone calls and meetings with MBA officers during the spring and summer of 2007 were merely intended to close the growing rift between them and the BIAW.

But as Barnes makes clear throughout his testimony—testimony that is corroborated by the official minutes of MBA meetings—the “wedge” that was causing this rift was largely focused on the BIAW’s efforts to pile up a “fund for Rossi,” and the MBA’s reluctance to earmark contributions to this fund at such an early date.

BARNES: I didn’t think that we needed to identify a specific funding source for something like this. If we wanted to contribute to a local political race or whatever, we would designate that funding source at that point in time. There’s no need to earmark funds in our budget.

Rossi also denies that he talked about the race for governor at a lunch meeting with MBA officers, yet MBA President-elect John Day, who set up the lunch, testifies in his deposition that this was the whole purpose of the meeting:

DAY:  I wanted to get the chair officers together with Dino so that we could have an opportunity to try to convince him to run for governor.

Whether Rossi’s sworn testimony rises to the level of perjury, well, I’m no attorney, so I don’t know.  But the depositions make clear that Rossi was much more involved in the BIAW’s illegal fundraising scheme than he has heretofore admitted, and that what little active participation he does acknowledge puts him and the BIAW in direct violation of WA’s campaign finance and disclosure statutes.

Rossi’s fallback position has always been that he wasn’t aware of BIAW’s efforts on his behalf and that he never helped them raise any money for the gubernatorial race, but that even if he did, that would have been okay, because he wasn’t officially a candidate at the time.  But that’s not what the law says.

RCW 42.17.020, Definitions

(9) “Candidate” means any individual who seeks nomination for election or election to public office. An individual seeks nomination or election when he or she first:

(a) Receives contributions or makes expenditures or reserves space or facilities with intent to promote his or her candidacy for office;

(b) Announces publicly or files for office;

(c) Purchases commercial advertising space or broadcast time to promote his or her candidacy; or

(d) Gives his or her consent to another person to take on behalf of the individual any of the actions in (a) or (c) of this subsection.

And even Rossi testifies that at the same time he was talking with MBA officers—conversations these same officers testify focused on the 2008 gubernatorial race and the BIAW’s efforts to raise money for it—he was indeed considering a run for governor:

ROSSI:  I was about 75 percent sure I wouldn’t run…

Of course, no astute observer of Washington state politics believes for a minute that in May of 2007, there was only a one in four chance that Rossi would run for governor, but even that admission is enough to establish that he was in fact considering a run at that time, which would have barred any participation in the BIAW’s fundraising efforts.  Indeed, under state law, the very act of coordinating with the BIAW on their “fund for Rossi” made Rossi a legal candidate, and thus made such coordination illegal.

But I’m guessing you won’t read any of this on the front pages of our local newspapers, because you know… they wouldn’t want to play politics so close to an election.

We already voted. And yes, Republican Robocall, I have been on the lookout for last minute lies and distortions, like your presidential campaign has put out.

Geebus, could someone this session get a bill passed banning these infernal things already? The “but they are effective and cheap” argument kind of breaks down when they are calling households in a largely vote by mail state over the last weekend.

Everyone hates Robocall, (except the politicians on both sides who are too chicken to ban them.) It’s not a protected First Amendment right to use equipment and a service I’ve paid for to telephone spam our household. They serve little informational purpose, as non-inflammatory ones have little time for anything but broad brush strokes, and inflammatory ones serve no purpose but to um, inflame.

Die Robocall, die. I’ll get my movie listings from the Toobz.

I was 7 years old the last time I saw one of my hometown teams win a championship, when Dr. J and the Sixers beat the Lakers to win the 1983 NBA Championship.

Since that very faded memory, I’ve watched Wayne Gretzsky and the Oilers thump the Flyers in 1985 to win the Stanley Cup. I watched from the lounge of my freshman dorm as Joe Carter won the 1993 World Series for Toronto. I watched the Red Wings sweep the Flyers on a barstool in Harvey’s Tavern in Edmonds the first week after I moved to Washington. In 2001, I watched with my Microsoft co-workers (the original Reload crew) as the Lakers beat down the miracle Sixers in 5 games in the NBA Finals. And in February 2005, my fiancee sat next to me as the Eagles fell short against the Patriots in Super Bowl XXXIX.

I know that Seattle hasn’t had a championship over that time either, but there’s a special level of frustration that comes with getting so close so many times and not walking away with the trophy. All of that ended this week, though, and as I was sitting across from my wife at the Northgate Ram watching the Phillies pile onto each other in the middle of Citizen’s Bank Park, I couldn’t believe how easy they made it look. My buddies from back home were telling me that the city was ready to explode, as a Philly sports radio host once described “like a bottle of champagne in a paint shaker.” Well, the cork has finally been popped and it was amazing to finally see that parade down Broad Street in front of the 2 million people who were cramming onto SEPTA trains to make their way down to South Philly, knowing full-well that it could be a long time until that next championship comes around.

I’ve been asked a few times whether I want my future kids to root for Philly teams. No way. There’s something special about rooting for the hometown team and Philly just won’t be their hometown. Despite what happened with the Sonics, in the decade I’ve lived here, I’ve seen Seattle become a great sports city. I’m excited to take my sons or daughters to Mariners and Sounders games and watch the Seahawks every Sunday, just as my Mets and Giants-fan dad took me to Phillies and Eagles games.

But hell, that’s still a few years off. I’ll be at Sluggers this morning by 10am with my McNabb jersey on and a screwdriver in my hand. If any of you guys find me down there, I’ll buy you a drink (even if you’re wearing a Seahawks jersey). Go Eagles!

Obama	McCain
100.0% probability of winning	0.0% probability of winning
Mean of 369 electoral votes	Mean of 169 electoral votes

Yesterday’s analysis showed Sen. Barack Obama leading Sen. John McCain by a mean of 369 to 169 electoral votes. Today we get 18 new polls in 14 states to weigh in on the race. But there were really no surprises in the polls—just some tightening up on both sides.

Today, after 100,000 simulated elections (based on 137 “current” state head-to-head surveying 95,785 respondents, mostly in the past seven days), Obama wins all 100,000 times. Obama still receives (on average) 369 to McCain’s 169 electoral votes. Obama would have a near-100.0% probability of winning if the election had been held today.

Detailed results for this analysis are available at Hominid Views.

Methods are described in the FAQ. The most recent version of this analysis can be found on this page.

With just a few days to go until the election, Governor Christine Gregoire (D) holds onto her slight lead over challenger Dino Rossi (“G.O.P. Party”). This election is the rematch of the famous 2004 election that resulted in two ballot recounts and ended up in a six month legal challenge.

A new Washington Poll, a non-partisan, academic survey from the Washington Institute for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, finds Gregoire leading Rossi by 50% to 48%. The survey was conducted from 27-Oct to 31-Oct on a sample of 387 registered Washington voters; the margin of error is ±5.0%.

This poll yields results identical to the previous two poll, the first by SurveyUSA taken from 26-Oct to 27-Oct, that was 50% to 48% in Gregoire’s favor. And before that a Strategic Vision poll taken from 25-Oct to 26-Oct, had Gregoire up 49% to 47%—again a +2% edge over Rossi. One must go back ten polls to find Rossi in the lead—that’s all the way back to mid-September:

A combined analysis of the last three consecutive polls—which spans the range 25-Oct to 31-Oct—gives Gregoire 50.8% of the “votes” and Rossi, 49.2% of the “votes.” If the election had been held today, Gregoire would have had a 68.4% probability of winning.

Here is the distribution of votes generated by the analysis (i.e. this is the distribution of possible election outcomes in terms of the percentage of votes for each candidate):

The poll also finds Sen. Barack Obama leading Sen. John McCain in Washington state 51% to 39%. The +12% margin is narrower than the +17% (56% to 39%) Obama lead found in the SurveyUSA poll, but it matches the +12% (54% to 42%) lead over McCain found in the Strategic Vision poll.

(Cross posted at Hominid Views)