Experts say November 4 prez poll almost unwinnable' for McCain

Washington, Oct.14 : An expert forecaster on developments in Washington has claimed that the November 4, 2008 presidential poll is "almost unwinnable" for Republican candidate John McCain.

Though McCain is still championing the fact that he still fight back the advances being made by Democratic rival Barack Obama despite being six points down, Charles Cook, whose forecasts are among the most watched in Washington, has declared that McCain needs to forget any chances of winning and assess how wide a margin is his loss to Obama going to be.

"At this stage, the most relevant question would seem to be: 'How big will the train wreck be for the Republican Party up and down the ballot in November?' " The Globe and Mail quotes Cook as writing on his website.

William Kristol, the founding editor of the Weekly Standard, perhaps the most influential conservative magazine in the United States, said: "It's time for John McCain to fire his campaign. He has nothing to lose. His campaign is totally overmatched by Obama's."

Such Titanic sentiments are flooding newspapers and websites in part because some, though not all, polls show the gap in popularity between McCain and Obama becoming irreversible.

A poll released Monday by both Washington Post/ABC News and Gallup daily tracking shows Obama leading McCain by an all-but-insurmountable 10 points.

Gallup daily tracking has the spread among likely voters at seven percentage points. The Rasmussen daily tracking poll has the race narrowing to five points, and Reuters/CSpan/Zogby puts it at four points. The RealClearPolitics aggregate Monday was 7.4 per cent.

The state races, however, may offer a clearer picture of the situation. Obama enjoys a seemingly rock-solid 12-point lead in Iowa, which voted Republican in 2004.

And his aggregate lead in Virginia, which once was considered reliably Republican, is now above six points. Provided he held the states won by John Kerry in 2004 - and Obama enjoys comfortable leads in all those states - winning just Virginia and Iowa would put Obama above the 270 electoral college votes needed for victory.

ANI