Tony Snow joins CNN as a conservative commentator.
John McCain’s ties with a wealthy Arizona contributor and real estate developer recall the hard lessons McCain claims he learned from the Keating Five scandal.
President Bush sets the all-time Gallup record for presidential disapproval: 69 percent.
I’m not sure there’s much to say about Sen. Clinton’s threat to destroy the entire country of Iran with nuclear weapons if they first attack Israel with nuclear weapons other than it seems like garden-variety if unusually incendiary campaign rhetoric. But aren’t we leaving out of this equation the fact that Israel has a large nuclear arsenal and one specifically designed (via the use of nuclear-armed submarines and other methods) to survive a first strike and still exact massive retaliation on an attacker? Israel has nuclear weapons. For precisely this purpose.
Like we did in January and February, starting at 8 PM tonight when the polls close in Pennsylvania, we’ll be bringing you live election results as they come in right here on TPM. So join us.
Here’s what Professor Charles Franklin, who does the polling charts at pollster.com says about the final numbers …
Clinton has increased her lead in the trend estimates over the course of the last polls to 6.6 points using the standard estimator, and to 8.4 points using the sensitive estimate. Last minute polls have given her bigger margins.
Now the key question is whether undecideds push her over a 10 point win, or whether increases in turnout by new “unlikely” voters raises Obama’s total.
But remember, since the polls don’t allocate undecided, both they and the trend estimates are leaving some 8 percent of voters on the table. They will go somewhere, and if they break disproportionately for Clinton you have a “huge win”, while if they go overwhelmingly for Obama you have a nail biter or a dramatic come-from-behind win. In previous primaries, the “winner” has usually enjoyed a significant increase in support beyond what the last polls showed.
This last point is the key one. The final polls show Clinton with anywhere from mid-single digits to a ten point margin. But that’s still with a decent number of undecideds. If the late trend is toward Hillary (which it seems to be) and those undecideds break toward her (which they seem to have over the last few days) it’s likely more like a significant double digit win for her.
Mark Blumenthal, who’s the aforementioned Franklin’s partner in putting together the Pollster.com site, has a far more agnostic take on what we know about tonight’s results from the available poll data. He’s actually got an interesting caveat about the suggestion that undecideds seem to be ‘breaking’ for Clinton.