On Thursday the folks at First Read asked who would sell out whom first, John McCain or the Republican leadership.

*** Checks and balances: Considering the state of the Republican ticket right now (not just McCain, but congressional Republicans too), which will come first: McCain beginning to campaign as the Republican check on Nancy Pelosi's power or congressional Republicans beginning to campaign as the Republican check on Barack Obama?

According to Politico's Jonathan Martin, we now have an answer to this questio:

Implying that the GOP won't win back either the House or Senate, two McCain backers this morning sounded out a new talking point by raising the specter of Democrats in control of both the Congress and White House.

[...]

The comments, almost certainly coordinated, would seem to signal a new phase of the campaign.

Few believe the GOP has any chance to reclaim either chamber of Congress. But many in the party have sought to keep a brave public face on their prospects. Now, with under a month until Election Day, McCain's campaign has apparently decided that there is more political benefit in pressing the importance of divided government than pretending the GOP can reclaim the House or Senate.

We'll have to wait and see how well this reasoning works on voters. Certainly, it has the potential to drive a wedge within the Republican Party -- both within the elites and among the base -- as the party sees its presidential nominee selling out the party's congressional leadership (we all remember how well it worked for the GOP in the 1948 election when the selling out went in the other direction). Possibly it could sway some independent voters wary of too centralized of power (though whether this argument is actually persuasive is not at all apparent to me; just because voters often elect a divided government doesn't mean they do so intentionally). Almost undoubtedly it will not be enough to fundamentally change the direction of the election.

Here are today's numbers:

Again today there appears to be slight movement, though the overall average looks much the same as it has for more than two weeks, with Barack Obama pulling in between 49.25 and 51.25 percent of the vote and John McCain pulling in between 41.75 and 43.00 percent. The last 15 days, in fact, have been among the most calm in the polling during the general election, with very little, if any, real movement in the national polling (even as the state-by-state polling has caught up and Obama has jumped to a major electoral college lead). None of this is good for the McCain campaign.

Feel free to consider this a thread on the state of the race, as well as a general open thread... What's on your mind?

Ouch.

The New York Times writes that Palin was "greeted by resounding (almost deafening) boos from the Flyers crowd." The Associated Press report, which will likely be seen in newspapers around the country, reads as follows:

Palin was booed when she first stepped on the ice before the Flyers' home opener against the New York Rangers to drop the ceremonial first puck. Palin, the Alaska governor and self-described "hockey mom," is trying to turn Pennsylvania into a red state.

Forbes, no bastion of liberalism, is even harsher in its writeup:

Palin Gets Booed in Philly!  This is sure to be the headline splashed across television and newspapers Sunday morning, the day after the Republican Vice Presidential candidate and hockey mom from Alaska drops the puck at the ceremonial face-off for the Philadelphia Flyers' home opener on Saturday night at the soon-to-need-a-name-change Wachovia Center. What will be missing from the news: the jeers were deserved.

Even Fox News was forced to admit "There were audible boos over the very loud music and some in the crowd had their thumbs down."

Just to step back and think about the optics of this for a moment, perhaps it will be the case that Philadelphians respect Palin for going in front of a hostile crowd. Then again, it's never a good thing for a candidate to earn headlines describing the nature and intensity of booing -- particularly when the stories don't come in the traditional news section of the paper or television report, which draws politics junkies unlikely to be swayed in one direction or the other, but rather in the sports section, read by more casual voters whose impressions of the candidate would more likely be shaped by this coverage. At the least, this moment in time should undercut the notion that Palin will bring a disproportionate number of hockey fans to the Republican ticket this fall.

Here are today's numbers:

Today's numbers, which are based on interviews conducted entirely after the presidential debate on Tuesday, show Barack Obama with his largest ever lead over John McCain, with Obama hitting 50 percent in all four daily tracking polls for the first time ever. Since the day before the debate, Obama's average has increased 1 1/2 percentage points while McCain's average has fallen a full percentage point, suggesting that not only was McCain unable to shift momentum away from Obama and towards himself, he wasn't even able to stop the growth in Obama's lead.

Unfortunately, election day isn't today, and these tracking polls are more reflective of the current state of the race than they are predictive of where the race will be in three and a half weeks. Nevertheless, it is clear that McCain is going to have to do something if he wants the trajectory of this race to change.

Yesterday Carnacki highlighted polling from the generally unreliable American Research Group showing Barack Obama leading in West Virginia by a 50 percent to 42 percent margin. While I think there's no way the race actually looks like that -- if you take ARG polling out of the mix, John McCain leads in the state by a 47.5 percent to 40.8 percent margin -- there are some indications that the state is closer than many believed it would be. However, even more important than the polling is the make up of the group believing the state to be in play -- a group that apparently includes the McCain campaign.

n what may be another signal that the troubled economy is forcing John McCain's campaign to play electoral map defense, Sarah Palin has scheduled a bus tour for Sunday through West Virginia, a state that's been leaning red throughout this presidential race.

Palin had already scheduled a bus tour of Pennsylvania on Saturday, but she will now repeat that act on Sunday by making various unannounced stops throughout West Virginia, culminating in a campaign event in southeast Ohio. It's a swing geographically reminiscent of Hillary Clinton's effort during the Democratic primary to court white working class voters in Appalachia. Clinton won the West Virginia primary over Barack Obama by a whopping 67-26 margin.

If you had told me two weeks ago, two months ago, or even two years ago that the Republican Vice Presidential nominee was going to be campaigning in West Virginia three weeks out from election day, I wouldn't have believed you for a second. First of all, if the GOP ticket was hitting the hustings in West Virginia, that would mean that the marginally blue states basically weren't in play, and that even the states that have been close but have swung towards the Republicans in recent years were moving too close to the Democratic column.

But beyond that, there aren't a whole lot of states in the nation that are trending away from the Democrats and towards the Republicans, but West Virginia has sure looked like one of them, going from a comfortable 51.5 percent to 36.8 percent win for Bill Clinton in 1996 to a comfortable 56.0 percent to 43.2 percent win for George W. Bush in 2004. What's more, the chattering class quickly settled on the narrative following Hillary Clinton's big win in the West Virginia primary in May that there was no way that Obama could carry the state in the general election. But it increasingly looks like the conventional wisdom was wrong and West Virginia is in play.

Here are today's numbers:

In today's other polling, the Battleground tracker (.pdf) is largely in line with the four-poll average above, with Barack Obama leading John McCain by a 51 percent to 43 percent margin. The latest survey from Time (.pdf) isn't too far off either, pegging Obama's lead at 50 percent to 44 percent.

So what do we know now? With at least two-thirds of the interviews upon which the data above are based taking place after Tuesday night's presidential debate, Obama's lead is as big, if not bigger, than it was before the debate, when his four-poll average lead stood at 49.75 percent to 42.75 percent. In fact, there has been very little movement in the last 13 days, with Obama's average showing ranging from 49.25 percent to 50.25 percent, and McCain's average showing ranging from 41.75 percent too 43.00 percent even through a window of time that included two presidential debates and one vice presidential debate. In other words, despite the seeming ups and downs of the campaign, the race has actually remained somewhat static as of late, interestingly enough, which isn't a great sign for the GOP.

These numbers, caught a few days ago by Marc Ambinder, are just stunning:

In the ABC News / Washington Post poll of Ohio, 37% of those who made it through the likely voter screen said they had been contacted by the Obama campaign in some way or another. That's ten points higher than the number who say they've been contacted by the McCain campaign.

And adding in e-mails or texts, the Obama figure rises to 43% of voters -- probably a record for a presidential campaign.

Think about this number for a moment. About three in eight voters deemed likely to show up to the polls in Ohio on November 4 have been contacted by the Obama campaign. Considering that hardcore Republicans -- say 40 percent or so of the electorate -- is out of play for Obama, that means that upwards of 72 percent of likely voters who could even conceivably vote for Barack Obama have heard from his campaign, whether through a knock on the door, a piece of direct mail delivered to the house, a call on the phone, a text to the cell, or an email sent to the computer. All of this, of course, about a month away from election day.

The ground game metrics may not come through in the top like numbers from polling around the country, but when it comes to election day -- when it actually counts -- the team with the far superior GOTV organization generally is able to pull out the victory. How exactly these efforts can and will swing the numbers, both nationally and in the key states, remains to be seen, but I would be very surprised if this seeming organizational divide between the two campaigns isn't apparent in the ultimate results of the election.

Here are today's numbers:

These numbers represent the baseline coming into last night, with presumably all, or virtually all, of the interviews upon which the data above having been conducted prior to the debate. When you throw in the Battleground tracker (.pdf), which shows Barack Obama leading 49 percent to 45 percent, and the McClatchy/Ipsos poll, which shows Obama up 47 percent to 40 percent, into the mix, today's overall average stands at 49.2 percent to 42.7 percent.

I'm about to board a plane back to Portland to be with family for Yom Kippur (to those observing the holiday tonight and tomorrow, have an easy fast), so this might be my only post today. So feel free to also consider this an open thread... What's on your mind?

And as a special bonus before I get on the plane, here's a link to the Maron v. Seder online radio show, which streams live at 3 PM Eastern/12 PM Pacific. Today's guest: Sarah Silverman (oy, I hate to miss the show!).