"If These Numbers Are Right, You Can Almost Call Nevada For McCain Now"

The media keep telling us that the election is over, but there are more signs of hope popping up everywhere and a slight panic is setting in at the Obama camp:

Last weekend I posted on a small exit poll that I conducted at a single polling station for early voting in Las Vegas. The results were terribly depressing for me because it showed a very strong Democrat turnout for Obama. That was the most depressing day for me of this entire campaign... It has been up hill ever since. Earlier today I reported on some positive signs out of Florida showing McCain with the lead among early voters there, according to an LA Times/Bloomberg poll. Then we learned that American Jews in Israel voting with absentee ballots (about 45,000 of them) are leaning better than two to one for McCain. Hopefully that indicates that American Jews won't go for Obama by the wide margin that is currently projected. That's important in Florida, Nevada and Pennsylvania.

Now we have very interesting news from Nevada where exit polling of early voters indicate that Obama has a very narrow two point lead:

Clark County, which includes Las Vegas and its surrounding area, has 68.7 percent of the registered voters in the state. Washoe County, which includes Reno, has 18.6 percent of the registered voters in the state.

In Clark County, Democrats hold a 46.3 percent to 32.3 percent edge in voter registration. In Washoe County, the split is 39.2 percent Democrat, 38.7 percent Republican.

With those numbers, you would expect Obama to be ahead by a much wider margin. Unless that poll of the early voters was way off — and this pollster managed to reach roughly one out of every 43 early voters; think about that when you see a poll of 1,000 designed to represent a national voting pool of 120-130 million voters! — a considerable number of Democrats and independents/unaffiliateds in Nevada are voting for McCain.

No pollster has had McCain ahead in Nevada since the end of September. So why is McCain so dramatically overperforming among early voters who are disproportionately Democrats?

On that cheery note, I will see you tommorow. KEEP HOPE ALIVE!