E-Minus 18 Days

The debates are over, the final sprint to the finish has begun, and our tradition of codifying the campaign scoreboard widget on the left sidebar into a daily post is renewed.  Who says I'm not a masochist?

POPULAR VOTE PROJECTION: Obama 50.5%, McCain 47.3%

ELECTORAL COLLEGE PROJECTION: Obama 357, McCain 181

"McCAIN MAXIMUM" (total Electoral Votes including states in which he is within five points): 270

If the PV numbers cause you to conclude that I think the race is "tightening," stop being an idiot by paying any attention whatsobloodyever to the Enemy Media polls.  Their only purpose up until the final week of the campaign is as psych-ops devices to discourage Republican turnout, which is why they're all wildly oversampling Democrats and undersampling Republicans, this time under the supposed meme of Team Messiah delivering the vast droves of "new voters" that the press breathlessly predicts every four years without it ever materializing on Election Day.  They'll all show the risibly large Obama leads shrinking not because of any late McCain surge, but because said pollsters will be bringing their numbers into line with where the campaign has been all along (a small but intractible Obama lead) for the sake of salvaging professional credibility.

If you rely upon top-down Enemy Media surveys, you'll spend every fourth year on the proverbial ledge.  Trust me, you get a better picture of the real state of the campaign by aggregating the state-by-state polling numbers and weighting them per Electoral College percentage.  And since I already do that, all you have to do is check each day's scoreboard post to know how frustratingly close the Original Mavericks will be to getting over the hump without ever quite making it, like King Sysephus of old, and then watching the Enemy Media declare B.O.'s narrow victory a "historic landslide" handing him a "mandate" to send his community-organizing death angels throughout the land to eat every American household's firstborn if the whim strikes him.

One hopeful note: The Rasmussen poll, the only top-down national survey within a yawning chasm of possessing any professional credibility (which explains why it's now affiliated with Fox News), has McCain back to within four points in its three-day rolling tracking poll.  That's the closest Sailor's been in that survey since September 23rd, and does not include last night's debate ass-kicking.  The beginning of a bona fide McCain surge, or a statistical hiccup?  We'll know by the weekend.