Luke Skywalker: Your over-confidence is your weakness.
The Emperor: Your faith in your friends is yours...

Barack Obama is up by considerable margins in both national and in critical swing state polling. He has more cash. He has more energy. He has more registered voters. He has bigger rallies. Despite all this, and this could just be my unhealthy fatalism coming in, I think this thing is a lot closer than we all think.

The polling in Ohio and Florida favors Obama, but let's be honest, he isn't exactly burning down the house in either state. He has about a 4 point lead in Florida and his Ohio polling shows him either slightly ahead, slightly behind, or tied.

Pennsylvania has him up by considerable margins, but I have this really bad feeling that a lot of those Pennsylvanians are going to have a hard time voting for an African American, no matter what they're telling the pollsters right now. I have a similar feeling about Virginia. When it comes to Appalachian states, consider me a believer in the Bradley effect.

The thing that really has me worried is that a lot of Obama's success is going to rely on "high turnout." The thinking is that he's going to draw well in the cities and will make enough headway in the smaller towns to propel himself to victory. But I always have a hard time believing that people are actually going to turn out to vote. What if the big cities and suburbs don't turn out?

I really hate to be a concern troll here, but I've been burned a lot over the past few elections. Nader's going to get a lot of youth voters and will get his necessary 4 percent to receive funding. Didn't happen. Kerry's going to win the big cities and win Ohio. Didn't happen. Until its proven otherwise, I'm going to remain skeptical that people actually will turn out.

Some of the common thinking right now is that Obama is underpolling, especially with young voters, African Americans, and Latinos. But I think that there's also a good chance that McCain and Palin are underpolling as well among evangelicals.

I mean, this election is the one they've been waiting for. The 2008 election is the golden egg. It's the election they've been praying for. With the next president getting to pick 2 to 3 new Supreme Court judges, this is the election that overturns Roe V Wade. They are definitely going to turn out.

I'm still confident in our chances, but consider me trollified. :-|

- Matt