This morning from Rasmussen.  People this is HUGE!

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/election_20082/2008_presidential_election/35_expect_mccain_victory_34_say_obama_will_win

"John McCain's convention and his choice of Sarah Palin as a running mate have moved him from 18 points behind to a one-point lead over Barack Obama when voters are asked who is likely to win this year's presidential election, according to a new Rasmussen reports national telephone survey.

Thirty-five percent (35%) say they expect McCain to win, 34% expect an Obama victory, and 30% say the race is too close to call. (see crosstabs).

While McCain's 35% to 34% edge is statistically insignificant, it is a remarkable turnaround from a month ago when 46% expected an Obama victory versus 28% who thought the Republican would win (see trends).

The new survey also found that 45% of voters say the election will be exciting, up from 23% in mid-August. GOP voters are more excited about the election now than Democrats.

Fifty-three percent (53%) of McCain voters say it will be exciting while just 38% of Obama voters say the same. A month ago, just 20% of McCain voters thought the election would be exciting while 29% of Obama voters held that view. "

*Keep in mind that Rasmussen is using old party affiliation modeling when determining his polling sample.  Despite his own work showing the party affiliation had shrunken to around 5 points or so (before Palin was added), he still uses a 7.6 advantage to Democrats in his poll.  The point is, the real numbers for McCain/Palin are probably evn better than what these show.

Cool!  This will mean even a bigger gap for McCain:

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/election_20082/2008_presidential_election/new_rasmussen_reports_party_weighting_targets_38_7_democrat_33_6_republican

"Like all polling firms, Rasmussen Reports weights its data to reflect the population at large. Among other targets, Rasmussen Reports weights data by political party affiliation using a dynamic weighting process (see methodology).

Generally, our baseline targets are established based upon survey interviews with a sample of adults nationwide completed during the preceding three months (a total of 45,000 interviews). Targets have been updated monthly.

However, from now through Election Day, we are making two adjustments to that process. First, due to potentially changes in the political environment, we will now base our targets upon survey interviews conducted over the preceding six weeks, rather than three months. Second, we will update the targets weekly, rather than monthly. Each weekly update will be reported here.

At the moment, this shift will have little impact on the daily Presidential Tracking Poll. However, it could provide a significantly more reliable measure of the race as Election Day draws near.

During Election 2006, there was a notable shift in partisan identification favoring Democrats as Election Day approached. During Election 2004, there was a notable shift in the opposite direction. It is impossible to know which direction this will flow during 2008 (see month-by-month results). These shifts correctly foretold the election outcome in both years.

For polling data released during the week of September 14-20, 2008, the new targets are 38.7% Democratic, 33.6% Republican, and 27.7% unaffiliated. For the first thirteen days of September, the targets were 39.7% Democrat, 32.1% Republican, and 28.2% unaffiliated. It should be noted that these figures indicate an improvement for Democrats since the beginning of the year.

The new targets are fairly similar to the ratio that existed when Democrats won control of Congress in 2006. They are also fairly close to the make-up of the electorate in the Presidential elections of 2000 and 1996.

The current targets also suggest a significantly better environment for Democrats than they faced in Election 2004. When President Bush was re-elected, there were far more Republicans and far fewer independent voters.

In terms of immediate impact on the tracking poll results, a one-percentage point increase in the number of Republicans would typically lead to a little less than half-a-percentage point increase in support for John McCain. That’s because McCain has a roughly 80 percentage point lead among Republicans but is essentially even among unaffiliated voters. A one-percentage point decrease in the number of Democrats would half the same impact."

AD...

Brought to my attention by our Friend here "Clear thinker"   . CT hope you don't mind if I push it back up the board?....too funny to be lost. Warning,  do not drink any beverage while watching or you might have to clean off screen like me after spitting out my coffe from laughing so hard.    Please pass around to all you know, soon to be a classic .                Steve

You really need to see this...

What Do Obama And Hitler Have In Common?

"If your 20 and not a Liberal, You have no Heart. If you are 40 and not a Conservative, You have no Brain"    Sir Winston Churchhill

It is hard to get a handle on the media, but the WaPo online today
has a story on locals criticizing Palins tenure as MAYOR, and right below is a story seems to poopoo the new "swifting boating" ad group targeting Obama.

Yet, anyone, especially Palin who first beat oldline Repubs, then Dem in the general election will naturally make tons of political enemies.   Kerry did too, especially in his post war remarks.

I am having a hard time hitting the right note here, but arent the WaPo issues here proof that the old MSM does the swiftboating of the candidates of the right (Palin makes politico enemies!  Is this a surprise?)  where private citizens need to organize and buy ad time to do it to the left.  I may try to clarify later, sorry for the lack of the clarity here:   ie doesnt the MSM do the "swiftboating" of the right, ie present the claims of one's politcal enemies, which is really of no surprise, much less usually "news" value.

i.e.  How is theBiden pennypinching charities not huge news??

If you have a match and you blow on it, it will likely go out.  If you have a forest fire and you blow on it, it will only burn hotter and spread.

The mistake the MSM/Obama Campaign is making is that they are blowing on Sarah Palin as if she is a match, when she is actually a forest fire.

The harder they blow, the hotter she gets and the further her message spreads.

When has there ever been this much attention, media or otherwise, to a VICE-preseidential candidate over the top of the ticket of EITHER party?  Once Sen. McGovern jettisoned Sen. Eagleton in '72 it was back attacking President Nixon. Also, I don't recall that even Geraldine Ferraro recieved this much press coverage, though most of the coverage Rep. Ferraro got was positive.  The whole media as well as the the Obama campaign seems entirely focused on Gov. Palin.  Which, in a sense, makes Sen. McCain choosing her as his running-mate a more brilliant decision than originally thought.  To use a military term, she's an excellent diversion in the sense that it's taken the Obama campaign off of it's game plan.

"Our liberties we prize and our rights we will maintain." Official Motto of the State of Iowa

I'm surprised they didn't say....

"We've been receiving a lot of criticism about placing too much emphasis on crowds at political rallies, so naturally we had to back-page this one."

When asked if he went to war with Iraq  to derail the impeachment vote:  “I don’t think any serious person would believe that any President would do such a thing." - President Clinton (Dec 1998).

....was post a column by one of their hack liberal commentators entitled "The New Politics Of Palin: Ignorance Is Strength?" in which we find this gem:

"The crowd, which I counted at 8,000 but which police estimated at 23,000, gathered at Van Dyck Park in Fairfax City represented votes for John McCain but passion for Palin."

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/rawfisher/2008/09/the_new_politics_of_palin_igno.html

I think we can be reasonably sure that on the morning of Wednesday, 5 November 2008, when the Left sees that it is once again faced with a Republican in the White House, it will be so totally and thoroughly deranged that any normal thinking person will be scared out his mind by what he sees the Left say and do.

Hey Tim,

Just a heads-up, as someone else here noted, there's some question about those numbers: the McCain campaign claims its crowd estimates are coming from the Fire Marshal (in the case of Fairfax, VA) and from the Secret Service (in other cases), but both the Fairfax Fire Marshal and the Secret Service deny ever supplying crowd estimates to the campaign. (http://www.bloomberg...)

Of course, that doesn't mean that there weren't 23,000 people at Fairfax--there very well could have been. But whether there were or not, that still leaves the question: why was the McCain campaign offering false info about where it got its numbers from?