The Boston Globe explores the changing political demographics in the South. Notably, they look at the demographic shift in North Carolina, Virginia and Florida - three states where Barack Obama has a real chance to win. “This is a realigning election,” said John Zogby, an independent pollster. The rise of a “creative class” in Southern cities, along with more relaxed attitudes toward race among younger voters south of the Mason-Dixon line, has dramatically improved the prospects for Democrats in the region, he said.

Of course, the story notes that Tennessee and Arkansas remain locks for John McCain.

According to a Yahoo! - AP poll released today 14% of the electorate remains persuable with four days remaining until election day.  Writes Al Fram of AP, “Who are they? They look a lot like the voters who’ve already locked onto a candidate, though they’re more likely to be white and less likely to be liberal. And they disproportionately backed Hillary Rodham Clinton’s failed run for the Democratic nomination.”

Thanks to a Think Tank reader for passing along a link to this fascinating story in The New Republic about the life of reporters on the 2008 campaign trail.  “You lose contact with the outside world,” says Matt Bai of The New York Times. “You call your spouse at home and talk about the trail and the person at home just doesn’t get it or care, because it’s the same story over and over again. It’s murder on relationships.” Every four years, Bai says, there’s at least one divorce or break-up. “It’s just not a normal human experience.”

It’s hard not to immediately think of Timothy Crouse’s book “Boys on the Bus” about reporters covering the 1972 presidential campaign - a must read for anyone interested in the life.  Also, here’s an older piece from NPR about reporters on the ‘08 trail.

Yesterday I received an e-mail from a Think Tank reader who is probably voting for Bob Barr. Why was he e-mailing me, you ask? He was writing to get my opinion as to why the McCain campaign appeared to be so upbeat? After all, he noted, the polls show McCain getting trounced nationally, and the state-by-state polls show McCain will a substantial deficit in the electoral college.

I told him that while I wanted McCain’s spokesperson Nicole Wallace to call me, she hadn’t and I couldn’t give him an actualanswer. But I was happy to guess. I suggested that this was the line the McCain campaign had to take, regardless of the polls. After all, McCain made a seriously blunder when he (a) failed to present himself as a true maverick: someone who would fight for ordinary Americans and work across party lines and (b) opted not to distance himself substantially from George W. Bush. It made his narrative far more difficult to communicate. Thus, he had to change it in the final week to have any chance.

But I also said that the McCain campaign may also be telling a bit of truth. Polls do appear to be tightening in the states McCain has to win. Polls released today show Obama up 4 in Pennsylvania, 1 in Indiana, 4 in Ohio, and 4 in Florida. If I’m McCain - and considering where his campaign has been - I’m pretty fired up about those numbers.

Also I said that there were a few additional factors that the McCain camp knows could help them. First, the youth vote won’t show up. Traditionally, they don’t.

Second, older white voters rally to McCain. Among white voters, McCain leads Obama 51% - 44%. Among older voters, Obama maintains a narrow lead 48% - 46%.

Third, McCain’s socialism attack is resonating. McCain launched this attack late, which means that there won’t be any reliable public polling data available to know whether it’s working. We also have to assume that there are more persuadable voters than many of the polls indicate.

Fourth, the surge in early voting won’t translate to substantial turnout on election day. I examined this in an earlier post, but if the people voting early are people that would vote anyway and few new voters show up, it could harm Obama in swing states.

Fifth, Obama’s GOTV operation isn’t as good as expected. It’s long been believed that Obama campaign has put in place a plan (rumored to have 200,000 volunteers in Florida alone) that is far more sophisticated than the Bush-Rove plan in 2004.

Honestly, each of these seem like a longshot. But as I’ve argued many times, strange things happen on election day. The next five days are going to be very interesting.

For more on this see John Dickerson’s piece in Slate and compare Zorn, E., “8 Reasons Obama Will Win.”

For weeks now I’ve heard pundits and people engaged in this election talk about the infamous Bradley Effect, a term derived from the 1982 California gubernatorial race between Tom Bradley, an African American, and George Deukmejian.  The theory goes that Bradley was leading in every major poll going into election day, but lost primarily because of race.  This, of course, has been has found new life as we get closer to the end of the 2008 presidential campaign.

The Los Angeles Times re-examines the ‘82 campaign and finds that there was a lot more going that year.  Cathleen Decker writes, “More than this campaign, the 1982 governor’s contest was fraught with the issue of race. It was less than a generation removed from the late-1960s riots in America’s cities, including Los Angeles, that sent fearful white voters scrambling for the suburbs. Bradley, the reserved, patrician mayor, a former police officer and city councilman, was running against George Deukmejian, the state’s Republican tough-on-crime attorney general and a former state legislator from Long Beach.”

Also, there was a competitive Senate race involving San Diego Mayor Pete Wilson and California Gov. Jerry Brown, and Proposition 15 which imposed statewide handgun restriction and a freeze on new handgun sales.  Bradley favored it, Deukmejian opposed it.  According to exit polls, two-thirds of voters opposed the restriction and those people voted overwhelmingly against Bradley.

Consider also that it was the first time Californians were able to vote by absentee ballot.  Deukmejian beat Bradley by 113,000 among absentee voters. Exit polls also showed that black voters didn’t show up on election day.  But that’s not to suggest that race wasn’t a big factor.  It was according to Charles Henry, a UC Berkeley professor of African American studies.

Dan Hopkins, a Harvard political scientist, has studied every election involving a black candidate for governor of U.S. Senate from 1989 to 2006.  He concludes that the Bradley effect cost African American candidates 2 or 3 percentage points until the mid-1990s.  Since then, “we’ve really found no evidence for a systematic Bradley effect.”  This includes the 2006 Tennessee Senate race involving Harold Ford Jr.  “There was no such effect,” he said.

A loyal Think Tank reader passes along this cool project from You Tube and PBS.  They’re encouraging you to make a video your voting experience and upload it for others to see.  Nifty idea . . . let’s see how many people participate.

Many more people are heading to the polls to vote early according to a report from The New York Times.  They’re facing long lines and substantial waits to do so, and early numbers show that Democrats substantially outweigh Republicans.

But Max Brantley over at The Arkansas Times blog wonders whether early voting will translate into a surge of overall voting.  He asks, “Are the early voters just the same people (like me and most Blog readers) who ALWAYS vote?”  He also questions whether minorities and young people will turnout compared to the number of dedidated Republicans likely to vote from now until election day.

Looking at current early voting numbers against 2004 totals shows the possibility that that more votes will be cast in 2008.  For example, in Colorado more than 1.1 million votes have been cast so far.  That’s 52% of the 2004 vote total.  In that year, 42.7% of Colorado’s vote were cast early.

In Georgia, more than 1.3 million votes have already been cast which accounts for 41.8% of the 2004 vote total.   In 2004,  20.2% of the votes in Georgia were cast early.

In North Carolina, more than 1.8 million people have voted.  That accounts for 50.2% of the 2004 vote total.  In that year only 30.8% of the votes were cast early.

We’ll keep tracking the numbers to see if this tapers off.

Lance Turner of Arkansas Business has come around to Twitter, the microblogging service that has taken the online world by storm.  Turner’s a big fan of the service.  He observes that Twitter allows him to post breaking news updates quickly and easily, and these updates can be sent t you on your desktop, Blackberry or mobile device as a text message.  He correctly notes, “With Twitter, you can be on the cutting edge of breaking news.”  You can find Turner on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/LT.

I’ve used Twitter on many occassions to post real-time comments while watching the presidential debates.  I’ll be on it tonight responding to Barack Obama’s 30-minute infomercial.  You can track me at http://www.twitter.com/blakerutherford.

Barack Obama has purchased 30 minutes of airtime tonight on all of the major networks as well as MSNBC, BET, Univision and TV One tonight at 7:00 p.m. CST.  The New York Times was given a 1-minute trailer of the program.   The program is being produced by Murphy-Putnam in Virginia.

A Rasmussen poll released this evening shows John McCain with a 10-point lead over Barack Obama in Arkansas.  Other learnings from the poll:

• Gov. Mike Beebe has a 68% approval rating
• President Bush has a 35% approval rating

I’ve always thought that robo-calls (automated phone calls to homes with pre-recorded messages) was a stupid and useless campaign tactic to drive turnout.  Cheap and easy doesn’t equal results, and it appears John McCain might learn that lesson the hard way.  He’s spending lots of money (relative, of course, to his smaller budget) on these types of calls in the hopes they’ll sway voter opinion and get people out to vote.

His opponent, the technologically nimble Barack Obama, adopted a text messaging strategy instead (although he’s running a few robo-calls just to oppose some of the messages McCain’s using in his.) In September, Obama, in an effort to capture as many mobile phone numbers as possible, invited people to submit their numbers and in exchange Obama would inform them of his VP pick via text message.  Millions of interested folks opted in.  And it’s given his campaign an advantage notes Farhad Manjoo of Slate.

Also, take a look at this entry from Lance Turner and the types of messages he’s received from the Obama campaign.

Steve Harrelson has a cool feature over at his Under the Dome blog. He identifies the most competitive Arkansas legislative races and provides an interactive map of Arkansas so that you can find more about them. Check it out. Hopefully Steve will keep it updated as the election draws closer.

The Electoral Update is gearing up for election day. We didn’t learn a whole lot last week; the polls remain fairly consistent in many swing states, and it’s become more obvious that John McCain doesn’t have much of a ground operation. Thus, a few thoughts:

• Barack Obama ’s path to 270 leads in many different directions. Conceivably, he could lose Ohio and Florida and still win the electoral college. Of the 11 states I see as true toss-ups, Obama currently leads in 7 of them, although only 3 are outside the margin of error. North Dakota is currently tied. He could lose them all and still win. Amazing.
• McCain’s path leads in far fewer directions. In addition to winning all of the remaining toss-up states, McCain has to pick off one more state currently leaning Obama. Here at The Think Tank, I believe his best chance is Minnesota where a new poll has him trailing by 5 points. Republican Norm Coleman is locked in a tough Senate battle with Al Franken (beware of the third party factor here, too.) The Twin Cities hosted the Republican National Convention back in September.
• What’s happening in Arizona? Polls released this week show McCain’s lead in his home state sinking to single digits. We’re not putting in the toss-up category . . . yet. But it hardly appears like a lock today.
• There are many key Senate races that will help Obama on election day: VA, NM, NH, CO, NC, MN, GA and OR. These would all be pick ups for the Dems.
• AK Sen. Ted Stevens has been convicted on all charges. Stupidly, he’s staying in the race, which means that he’ll lose his seat and drag the Republican image down all across America on election night. He’s also from Sarah Palin’s home state.

States solidly for Obama: CA, CT, DE, DC, HI, IA, IL, ME, MD, MA, NJ, NY, OR, RI, VT, WA (197 electoral votes).

New editions: None

States solidly for McCain: AK, AL, AZ, AR, ID, KS, KY, LA, MS, NE, OK, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, WY (137 electoral votes)

New editions: MS

States removed: None

States looking very good for Obama: CO, MI, MN, NH, NM, PA, WI (76 electoral votes)

States looking very good for McCain: WV (5 electoral votes)

Total electoral votes for Obama: 273

Total electoral votes for McCain: 142

Toss-ups: GA, FL, IN, OH, MO, MT, NC, ND, NV, VA, (123 electoral votes)

New editions to toss-ups: None

States moving off the toss-up list this week: None

According to the latest polls Obama leads in: OH (+4), NC (+1), VA (+9), MO (+1), IN (+4), FL (+5), NV (+5) (102 electoral votes)

Obama’s total: 375

According to the latest polls McCain leads in: GA (+1), MT (+4) (18 electoral votes)

McCain’s total: 160

Tied: ND (3 electoral votes)