Five Reasons Why Obama Will Win on Nov. Four

1.  Money.  Sen. Obama’s campaign has a significant advantage in its campaign coffers.  They currently have over $130 million dollars on hand to spend in the next two weeks.  If you take the swing states of Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Florida, Ohio, Virginia, and North Carolina, that equals almost 19 million dollars they can spend in each state before the election.  Since Sen. McCain took public financing he has far lesser funds available to use as well as having to defend traditional republican states like Virginia and North Carolina.

2.  Time.  With under two weeks to go and no debates left the clock is quickly running out.  Campaign strategies have already been executed and now its a matter of turning out voters.  Thanks to the extended Democratic primary millions of new voters were added to registration lists in key swing states.  These new voters overwhelming favored Obama in the primaries and are poised to vote again for him in the general election.

3.  Strategy.  Obama’s campaign has for months been implementing its strategy to put more states in play than were in play during the previous two elections in 2000 and 2004.  Currently, the only so called “blue” state that is in play is Pennsylvania.  While the Republican leaning states of Ohio, Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, Florida, Virginia, and North Carolina all are trending more to Obama.  The McCain campaign is forced to defend these states by spending more time and money their while allowing Obama’s campaign to be on the offense.  With less than two weeks to go, being on the offensive is clearly a significant advantage.

4.  Ground Game.  Campaigns usually divide their supporters into two groups; those who volunteer and those who are given paid positions.  While neither campaigns are short of campaign volunteers to help get out the vote Obama does have the edge when it comes to paid staff on the ground.  With the extraordinary amounts of money earned so far the campaign has had full time staff in all the battleground states working everyday to get out the vote.  In Florida, for example, some forty offices with paid positions currently exist.  The benefit of the paid supporter does not come down to just the money incentive but also the available time.  Most volunteers can only give so many hours a week or only time on weekends while paid staff are able to continue operations throughout the week.  Ground games surely benefit from sustained consistency and Obama’s campaign has that advantage.

5.  Media.  The media doesn’t get to vote but it sure helps when they are writing positive articles about your campaign.  The Obama campaign is currently enjoying a positive amount of coverage compared with the mostly negative coverage of the McCain campaign.  Why this is, is probably best left for the pundits to dissect, but the reality is its happening.  Positive and negative coverage usually goes in cycles for any campaign but the recent economic developments around the world have really put political coverage in a box.  The majority of Americans are now more concerned about their economic future than about back and forth campaign chatter that seems small in comparison to the largest stakes of the moment.

Other factors not mentioned may be important as well but these were in my view, the most significant factors to look at.