One of the conservative forums on which I lurk has a thread for predicting the election’s outcome. Approximately half of the 35 votes believe McCain will win (18/35, slightly better than half). In the interests of full disclosure, a lot of people on this particular forum seem to be under the age of 18. Still, I was surprised that fully half of voters thought McCain would win.

Some gems from the thread, after the jump.

“I think that McCain will win because the polls are taken by democratic journalists..”

“My heart hopes for McCain but my head believes the election has already taken place in the media.”

“I still think there is a chance of a McCain upset, but since you are making me bet, I’ll play it safe and say Obama with a mere 2 percent in the popular vote.”

“There isn’t a doubt in my mind that Barack Obama will win the election. There is a bit more doubt, but not much that he will be assasinated.”

Another individual, reasonably intelligent most of the time, is talking as if the Democratic Party is having unity problems still:

There is a huge chunk of America that believes the Obama-rumors and will vote against him on that. Then you’ve got a significant group that will vote for McCain strictly because he’s a Republican. You’ve got a small group of Democrats that aren’t happy that Clinton isn’t on the ticket.

On the other hand, you’ve still got a significant chunk of Democrats that will vote for Obama simply along party lines. And you’ve got a few Republicans that like the man as a politician. But you don’t have many people voting against McCain because of any McCain rumors, just a smaller group that thinks the Republican party as a whole is the devil.

In the end, the case has almost always been that the Republican party doesn’t need “special interest” votes on abortion or homosexuality to maintain it’s stability, but it would like to have them. The Democrats, however, need those special interests, but seem to act as though they don’t actually want them.

This, to me, reads like post-RNC optimism, when the PUMAs were still a threat and when the polls actually showed McCain in the lead. It ignores the increasing anti-Palin movement out there–there are just as many Palin rumors as Obama rumors, and a scary number of them are true or “true enough” for most people. It seems to miss the strong opposition to McCain as erratic and unstable, the profound disappointment with the negative nature of his campaign, the sad realization that he is no longer the John McCain everyone used to support. There are strong fears of a warmonger for president. The country doesn’t like the Republican party right now. The country wants something new in Washington. And the people who believe the Obama-rumors tend to be about as wingnutty as they come–certainly not the sort who were going to vote for the Democratic candidate anyway. And at the moment the Republican party is frankly not very stable.

Just for the record, even after the RNC I was confident of Obama’s ultimate victory. It’s better than I’d hoped for, really. I never thought the Republican party would be tearing itself apart over this.

UPDATE: Obama has pulled into a 22-18 lead in the “who do you think will win?” poll. I do wish forum polls were more scientific.