CNBC.com Too late for McCain?

Has John McCain now fallen too far behind, too late in the presidential campaign, to overtake Barack Obama?

Just three weeks before Election Day, that's the question facing strategists in both parties. History suggests the answer is "probably."

But Mr. Obama's breakthrough as the first African-American nominee has already made history, and represents a wild card that could yield election returns at odds with poll results. Beyond that, Mr. McCain's hopes rest on dominating last-minute decisions by those still undecided and shaking loose some voters now backing his Democratic rival.

Mr. McCain trails 50% to 43% in the latest Gallup tracking poll of registered voters. His deficit in that survey has remained seven percentage points or more for most of the last two weeks.

Since Gallup began presidential polling in 1936, only one candidate has overcome a deficit that large, this late, to win the White House. That was Ronald Reagan, who trailed President Jimmy Carter 47%-39% in a survey completed Oct. 26, 1980.

The pattern since polling began is that opinion swings get smaller as Election Day approaches and voters have accumulated more information. As American politics have grown more polarized, the opportunity for large swings has grown smaller still.

According to Princeton political scientist Larry Bartels, front-running candidates have typically preserved three-fourths of their October leads. Applying statistical theory to current polls, Mr. Bartels pegged Mr. Obama's chance of winning the popular vote at "a little over 90%."

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He noted three factors that might skew the results. Two of them, a potential turnout surge and the tendency of late-deciders to punish the party holding the White House in economic downturns, appear to favor Mr. Obama. The third, racial resistance among white voters, would favor Mr. McCain.

The McCain campaign sees scant opportunity for eroding Mr. Obama's near-monolithic support from fellow African Americans and two to one edge among Hispanics. But strategists for the Arizona senator figure one in five white voters--roughly 15% of the electorate--remain open to persuasion.

The campaign says those persuadable voters tend to be younger, single, less educated and female; they also include some senior citizens distressed over sagging investments. They are the targets for recent McCain attacks on Mr. Obama's ties to one-time Weather Underground figure William Ayers.

If one third of them shift allegiance from Mr. Obama to Mr. McCain, they'd produce a 10 percentage point swing wiping out Mr. Obama's current lead. Obama strategists insist voter preferences have hardened enough to make that difficult.

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