08AMA Funny (and not so funny) bits from the campaign trail.

From breitbart.com:

DIXVILLE NOTCH, N.H. (AP) - Barack Obama came up a big winner in the presidential race in Dixville Notch and Hart’s Location, N.H., where tradition of having the first Election Day ballots tallied lives on.

Democrat Obama defeated Republican John McCain by a count of 15 to 6 in Dixville Notch, where a loud whoop accompanied the announcement in Tuesday’s first minutes. The town of Hart’s Location reported 17 votes for Obama, 10 for McCain and two for write-in Ron Paul. Independent Ralph Nader was on both towns’ ballots but got no votes.

“I’m not going to say I wasn’t surprised,” said Obama supporter Tanner Nelson Tillotson, whose name was drawn from a bowl to make him Dixville Notch’s first voter.

Cute.

New Republic senior editor Jonathan Chait talks about various takes on Obama’s lead.

These signs were produced for those whose Obama signs were stolen:

From The Daily Beast:

“One thing I know is that both Nixon and Reagan would have agreed with Obama’s speech against the Iraq War… But all the organs of the conservative movement followed Bush over the cliff—as did John McCain.”

Worth reading.

From Gallup:

The final Gallup 2008 pre-election poll — based on Oct. 31-Nov. 2 Gallup Poll Daily tracking — shows Barack Obama with a 53% to 42% advantage over John McCain among likely voters. When undecided voters are allocated proportionately to the two candidates to better approximate the actual vote, the estimate becomes 55% for Obama to 44% for McCain.

The trend data clearly show Obama ending the campaign with an upward movement in support, with eight to 11 percentage point leads among likely voters in Gallup’s last four reports of data extending back to Oct. 28. Obama’s final leads among both registered voters and likely voters are the largest of the campaign.

Somehow I doubt Drudge will be sticking this one in bold, red, italicized type. Here’s a widget where you can select between polling models:

The orange bars represent polls which include cellphones in their samples.

From The New Republic:

I did a radio hit the other afternoon with Mark DeCamillo of California’s vaunted Field Poll, which does include cellphones in their samples. He suggested to me that it was much easier to get the cooperation of cellphone users on the weekend than during the week. How come? Because most cellphone plans include free weekend minutes. Conversely, one might expect that young people are particularly difficult to reach on their landlines over the weekend, since they tend to be away from home more (especially on a weekend when some nontrivial number of them are out volunteering for Obama). So, while I haven’t tried to verify this, it wouldn’t surprise me if the “cellphone gap” expands over the weekend, and contracts during the week.

If you’ll permit me an anecdotal observation, I don’t know a single person personally who’s under 40 that has a landline. Granted, my circle of friends and colleagues is admittedly geeky and progressive, but there are a whole bunch of people like that. And they all vote. It’s lunacy to think a poll that does not include cellphones can even approximate accuracy.

You have to wonder if John McCain would even understand the content of most of this video.

McCain supporters, give up. Your candidate already has. This is McCain’s attempt at saving face, so that after he loses on Tuesday, he won’t be remembered as a bitter old hate-monger.

The latest RCP Florida poll average shows a spike in Obama’s lead in Florida over the last few days. This is significant because as recently as last week, most polls had Obama’s lead in Florida within the margin of error.

I love this ad produced by Errol Morris with music composed by Mark Mothersbaugh, two of my favorites. The spot was created to promote Morris’ website, People in the Middle for Obama.

If you’ve never seen Morris’ The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, move it to the top of your Netflix que now.

Behind the Candidates just went live. The site provides profiles of each candidate’s key advisors. It also has links to articles on each advisor and, in some cases, even videos. A great resource.

Tampa –– Head of the Hillsborough County Republican Party forwarded the following email to Republican volunteers:

This e-mail was sent to me from one of our Volunteers in the Temple Terrace office. If you think it can help us win this election please pass it on. This election is now in our hands everyone can make a difference.

Thanks, Dave

The threat: Here in Temple Terrace, FL our Republican HQ is one block away from our library, which is an early voting site.

I see carloads of black Obama supporters coming from the inner city to cast their votes for Obama. This is their chance to get a black president and they seem to care little that he is at minimum, socialist, and probably Marxist in his core beliefs. After all, he is black — no experience or accomplishments — but he is black. I also see young college students and their professors from USF parking their cars with the prominent ‘Obama’ bumper stickers. The students are enthusiastic to be voting in a historic election where there may be the first black president.

The college professors, particularly in the social sciences, for the most part have little or no experience in the work-a-day world.

Their life experience has been mostly academic under the tutelage of liberal college professors. For them, a little socialism and anti-Americanism is a good thing. After all, if terrorists attack us, we must have done something to provoke them.

You and I understand the dangers the potential Obama presidency presents to our way of life. The suppression of free speech, introducing union intimidation in the workplace, increased dangers to our nation by terrorists, cutting our defense budget by 25%, turning our tax system into a national welfare system and economic policies that could drive us into a depression.

There is only one way to stop Obama: Vote!!!
(And get everyone you know to vote)
Only you and I can stop Obama now!!
Seven days to go and we must act immediately.

A plan of action for you and I:
VOTE

Obama is advertising on TV asking all his supporters to take a day off work or class to vote. Contact personally everyone you know reminding them to vote and how important it is. Parents, voting-age children, in-laws, co-workers, church contacts, school contacts, business contacts. Make a list and contact them.

Send this message to everyone on your email list that wants to defeat Obama. Your email is an effective tool if you use it wisely and promptly. You can reach 10,000,000 people in the next seven days if as few as ten people on your list take prompt action and ten people on their list and ten people on their list … you get the idea.

Let’s all pray and work and we will surely celebrate our victory on 11/5/08.