UF polling expert doesn't see an upset today

"Dewey Defeats Truman"

It's a page out of history, but can history repeat itself?

The now-famous Dewey headline led the Chicago Tribune on the morning of Nov. 3, 1948. The article indicated clearly that governor of New York Thomas Dewey had defeated incumbent Harry S. Truman for the position of president of the United States.

In fact, this was not the case. The paper itself is immortalized in a photograph showing a victorious Truman holding the paper over his head, beaming at his surprise victory.

The image is a reminder of what can go wrong if you count your chickens before they hatch.

Still, at least one University of Florida expert in the inexact science of political polling thinks it is unlikely that voters will awaken Wednesday to find that Sen. John McCain, currently behind in the polls, will have pulled off an upset victory over Democratic Sen. Barack Obama.

Stephen Craig chairs the department of political science at UF. He also directs the graduate program in political campaigning, so he follows the shifts and swings of politics, public opinion and pre-election polling closely.

"The numbers that I trust the most make me think that Barack Obama will win this election," Craig said in a telephone interview.

"Do I think it's a done deal? No, because we are treading new turf here," he added.

Every election has its unique aspects, but clearly with an African-American candidate for the presidency, this one is special, Craig said.

With Sarah Palin sharing the GOP ticket with McCain, voters have their second opportunity to vote in a woman as vice president. Craig sees the real gender victory, however, in Hillary Clinton's strong campaign in the primaries, which in his view had more of an impact than adding Palin to the McCain ticket.

"Palin could have been a woman, a man or a horse, and she would have energized the Republican base," Craig said. "Her gender doesn't have that much to do with it."

In many ways, the "Dewey Defeats Truman" event repeated itself in the 2000 presidential race between George W. Bush and Al Gore.

Bush narrowly won the election, with 271 electoral votes to Gore's 266. The election featured a controversy over who won Florida's 25 electoral votes (and thus the presidency), and the national recount showed that the losing candidate had received 543,816 more popular votes.

This year has been so unpredictable, in Craig's view, that it is exposing the pollsters whose methodology is suspect.

"We are getting numbers that are all over the map," he said.

Based on "the numbers that I trust," here's Craig's pre-election prediction: Alachua County and South Florida will vote Democratic, while the rest of the state supports the GOP and John McCain.

"What we may see, however, is a change in voter demographics that will make an Obama victory in Florida a possibility," Craig said.

When all the votes are counted nationwide, he expects Barack Obama will have been elected president.