A Tale of Voter Fraud, Money, Polls and a Plumber

ACORN voter fraud investigations are underway in Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Missouri, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, PA, North Carolina, Connecticut. One Ohio youth registered 72 times. And Ohio's Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, is fighting to keep from verifying thousands of voter's eligibility.

Every presidential election encounters voter fraud, but this year is incredible in that the fraud is right out-in-the-open. And the American people are well served to have the FBI investigating these allegations.

Politically what is striking about this (outside the blatant illegality) is that with all of this intended to help Obama, is the fact it is diametrically opposed to the in-the-bag predictions Obama's supporters are espousing.


Karl Rove's analysis puts Obama's spending 3 to 1 over McCain, yet today's Gallup tracking poll among likely, traditional voters has McCain within just two points and the latest Investor's Business Daily IPP poll which called the 2004 presidential race within .04%, also has McCain within three points and both polls are within the margin of error. Moreover, an AP/Yahoo poll* that weighted 873 democrats against 650 republicans shows a two-point difference, with Obama at 44% and McCain at 42%.

What's more is that Obama has purchase costly air-time in late October and has ads running non-stop, plus, he's spending money in states he shouldn't really have-to -- meaning that the campaign coffers are quite large.

So, as often cited in this blog, something had to occur to move the polls in this direction as polls don't just move without reason. Perhaps the debate moved the poll numbers but that isn't seeing the forest-for-the-trees. What's moved the numbers in a McCain favorable direction is one man's words.

And it isn't the words of either of the candidates; it was a man now known as "Joe the Plumber". Now a national figure, this (pun-inescapable) average joe, this joe-six-pack has put the presidential race into a simple issue: taxes.

What may go down in election history is the now famous exchange between the plumber and the democrat nominee when Joe asked Senator Obama, "Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn't it?" Obama answered the question with a redistribution qualifier at the end of his reply, "I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."

This has lit a fire under the McCain campaign and put Barack in an awkward position, having to redefine his statement so not to include the dreaded "s" word: socialism. And the mainstream media has been on a quest to disqualify the plumber.

Obama may have committed a faux pas that defines him going forward into the last three weeks of the election. What's more is John McCain has found a way to diffuse Obama's repeated attempt to lump the maverick with George W. Bush by introducing the last debate the humorous
fact, “Senator Obama, I am not President Bush. If you want to run again President Bush, you should have run four years ago.”

Coupled with McCain's new focus and talking points, he may well prove the conventional wisdom wrong.


*Interview dates: October 3, 2008 – October 13, 2008Interviews: 1,769 adults; 1,528 registered voters873 Democrats; 650 Republicans Sampling margin of error for a 50% statistic with 95%confidence is: ±2.3 for all adults; ±2.5 for registered voters±3.3 for Democrats; ±3.8 for Republicans