At the direction of my editor over at Gadgetell.com, I am scouring the net for helpful election info. I came across the chart above thanks to betfair.com. The chart shows " the most accurate, up-to-the-minute prediction of who will win the U.S. Presidential election based on millions of wagers placed in the world’s largest betting exchange." Neat stuff.
But look closer and you see a divergence on September 15th (a Monday). Something happened on this date that reversed both Obama's downward trend and McCain's comeback. So I start digging around for a turning point speech, an event that made everyone sway or something. I find nothing the candidates did. McCain phoned a rally in Atlanta. Matt Damon had a rant publicized about Palin and his uneasy feelings toward her. But then I found something else:
Could it be that Saturday Night Live's lampooning of Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin handed this election to Obama? For many of us that can't stay up that late anymore, Tivo and YouTube turned this clip into a sensation and set the stage for some of SNLs highest ratings in years.
One could theorize (and I do) that the SNL skit changed the conversation in America from "us vs. them" to a view that makes the McCain ticket a punchline. No matter what you thought about Palin's qualifications before SNL, after you just had to giggle. And judging by the number of views of the partial clip on YouTube (NBC order YouTube to take down much of it), a lot of us were giggling.
Surely, SNL made fun of Obama and Biden, but was it Fey's spot on looks that turned this thing around? Was it her impersonation? Would future party candidates be vetted by who looks like them in SNL cast members? I am not sure I can answer these, but the 9/13 SNL and subsequent online viewing seems to have impacted this election.
Sound off, did SNL and online views of the show give this election to the Democrats? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
Check out the updated chart: [betfair]
Comments
I love the Tina Fey impersonations of Sarah Palin, but I don't think that was real reason for the shift in poles:
The Dow dropped over 500 pts on that Monday, but the real reason The poles made a major shift,
Lehman Bros filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy, one of the largest in US History.
Noj nOj nOJ
The dow didn't respond until later and by then the trend lines were firmly in place.
McCain got beat by Tina Fey. Awesome.
And yes, Tina Fey swung the election.
believe it!
Didn't Lehman announce over the weekend that they were filing for bankruptcy? Since courts and the stock market are not open then, hard for them to react.
Isn't that also the day that Joe Biden kept pointing back to saying his best friend said at 9:00 that the fundamentals are sound and then at 11:00 AM everything bad?