The phone bank waits for the 7:30 p.m. conclusion of Barack Obama’s half hour television presentation. The phones started up immediately afterward.

Tools of the canvassing trade – artificial sunshine.

You all know what to do. So do it.

Getting started at a phone bank for Obama.

You all know what to do. So do it.

MISSOURI

Obama – 48%

McCain – 47%

Barr – 1%

Nader – 2%

McKny – 0%

Not Sure – 3%

10/26/2008

…In Missouri, Obama is up by a single percentage point, 48% to 47%. That’s the strongest showing yet for McCain in polling conducted during October and comes just after his weakest showing of the year when he trailed by five a week ago. However, as we noted at the time, last week’s survey was conducted the day after Obama held two massive rallies in the state. Despite these ups and downs, Obama has held a very slight lead-from one to five points–in all four Fox News/Rasmussen Reports Missouri polls conducted during October.

A conversation between a volunteer and a field person, about to go out on a canvass: “Are we going to walk there?” “Oh God no, we’ll drive, I’m from LA.”

You all know what to do. Do it.

SurveyUSA released a 672 sample poll of “Likely voters” on October 27th taken in Missouri October 25th through the 26th. The poll runs a head to head match up between McCain and Obama. The margin of error is 3.9%.

The poll was sponsored by KCTV in Kansas City and KMOX in St. Louis.

If the election for President were today, would you vote for … (choices rotated) Republican John McCain? Democrat Barack Obama? Or one of the other candidates?

All

McCain – 48%

Obama – 48%

Other – 3%

Undecided – 1%

The actual count (frequencies) puts this into some perspective:

If the election for President were today, would you vote for … (choices rotated) Republican John McCain? Democrat Barack Obama? Or one of the other candidates?

All [frequency]

McCain – 320

Obama – 325

Other – 17

Undecided – 10

Brett Penrose on cold weather politics:

Released October 21, 2008:

Missouri (11)

McCain-Palin 48.3%

Obama-Biden 48.0%

Not Sure/Other 4.6%

Both candidates run strongly with their base constituencies, and for now independents aren’t breaking either way. So we have a tie.

Zogby Interactive – Missouri Oct 17 – Oct 20 n=717 – MOE +/- 3.7 percentage points

The folks at fivethirtyeight don’t think very highly of Zogby Interactive:

Pollster   Pollster-Introduced Error

Zogby Interactive +5.73

Average pollster +1.97

Take this one with a grain of salt, or two, or three, or 5.73.

Via the Great Orange Satan.

David Sedaris on undecided voters – in The New Yorker:

Shouts & Murmurs

Undecideds

…I look at these people and can’t quite believe that they exist. Are they professional actors? I wonder. Or are they simply laymen who want a lot of attention?

To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?”

To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.

I mean, really, what’s to be confused about…?

[emphasis added]

We are not worthy.

Any attempt at comprehensive coverage of the event by us would never get off the ground.

In case you haven’t already figured it out, we’re not there.

We’ve previously attempted to cover a McCain campaign event in our area – with some success. It’s just that we weren’t made to feel particularly welcome:

After two days of calling McCain headquarters asking for credentials (they don’t do credentials) to today’s town hall at Union Station in Kansas City I was told to show up with my identification. They put me on their media notification e-mail list and I received the press logistics notice. So I hauled myself out of bed at 5:00 a.m. and got to Union Station at about 7:30 a.m. Then we waited around for a while. Then we went through security…

…They didn’t know what to do with all the “freelancers” who showed up to cover this event. After a bit of head scratching from the people on the ground they decided to let us “media orphans” in…

…Then we were informed we might be asked to leave. Then we were informed we’d be allowed to stay…

To be fair, I did get in (Hey there, Tina!), but apparently not everyone can anymore:

…Something interesting is happening with John McCain’s campaign. Up until now, we’ve had no trouble gaining access to field offices and volunteers. Here in St. Louis, we were told by Tina Hervey, Missouri Republican State Party Press Secretary, that she had never heard of FiveThirtyEight, and while they trusted Politico, we were people who they had to decide whether we “shouldn’t or don’t need to be talking to.” (McCain’s Missouri press secretary actually works out of Iowa, and did not return calls or email.) I told Tina that’s not a story we wanted to write, that this was our first Republican resistance, and that while she may not have heard of us, we’d probably go over 2.5 million site visits this week, now that we’re regularly past 400,000 per weekday. I told her I’d hold off writing her flat refusal and give her the opportunity to change her mind.

No budging. We were told that we’d be asked to leave public field offices we now attempted to visit. We did not get any promised follow-up helping get access to the post-debate Palin rally last night, and we were locked out. Hmm…

Given our past experience, the present environment, and the tone of the event advisory, we at Show Me Progress were not even going to try to cover the Belton event.

Okay, after I figured I wouldn’t have a chance of getting into the event, I received this:

MEDIA ADVISORY

McCain-Palin 2008 Campaign Conference Call

For Immediate Release

Contact: Press Office

Monday, October 20, 2008…

…ARLINGTON, VA — Today, at 4:00 p.m. EDT, McCain-Palin 2008 will hold a press conference call with Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Randy Scheunemann, McCain-Palin Foreign Policy Adviser to discuss Joe Biden’s admission that Barack Obama’s election will precipitate an international crisis.

Monday, October 20, 2008

PRESS CONFERENCE CALL

WHO: Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani

         Randy Scheunemann, McCain-Palin Foreign Policy Adviser

WHAT: Press Conference Call

WHEN: Monday, October 20, 2008 at 4:00 p.m. EDT

[emphasis added]

Must be payback for “Noun, verb, 9/11”.

This would be really interesting.

So I figured I’d dial into the conference call. Busy signal. I kid you not. I’ve never called into a conference call that didn’t pick up right away. Is it really possible to get a busy signal?

It’s a symptom of the universe and the state of McCain’s campaign…

Why are you voting on November 4th?