John McCain’s senior advisers are pointing to tightening poll numbers as evidence of “one of the greatest comebacks” on behalf of their candidate as Election Day approaches.
GOP officials said “Joe the Plumber” crystallized “the Obama philosophy of sharing the wealth and redistribution,” on a conference call with reporters Friday to discuss the state of the race.
Campaign manager Rick Davis said “we’re pretty jazzed up about what were seeing in the movement of this election.” He said their team was seeing “probably the best 10 days of polling since the convention.”
“We think we’ve shaken off the effects of the financial collapse that suppressed our numbers prior to the last debate and we believe we are on the run right now that, from what we can tell, will be unabated through the course of the election," he said.
He pointed to public polling data showing Barack Obama up by 12 points in Iowa. David said the McCain campaign’s internal polling showed Iowa to be “dead even” and noted Obama’s decision to campaign there on Friday.
The Republican National Committee’s Political Director Rich Beeson said, “We’ve seen a 75 percent increase in our numbers just over the last month of October.”
“That’s in every single state as they are moving toward Election Day,” he added.
McCain’s lead pollster, Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies, pointed to the closing numbers on party identification, which are much tighter than has been reported by most outlets.
McInturff said the media typically underreports party identification by 3 to 5 percent, but this election polls have put that number as 8 to 15 percent below.
“That’s not America anywhere in the last generation and a half,” he said.