Are all those "undecideds" really closeted McCainites?

We were all wondering who they were (God knows, I was), those undecided voters, and Bill Greener gives us an interesting, if infuriating, answer in his article today in Salon. He suggests that they are all going to vote for McCain. Further, he declares, unless Obama is attracting at least 50% of the vote in key swing states, he is likely to lose them because all the undecideds are white racists who are unwilling to admit that they're actually voting for McCain (I think he phrases it more along the lines of how undecideds "trend" toward the white candidate, but be that as it may); he cites two gubernatorial and two senatorial races where two non-incumbents (one black, one white) were running against each other in 2006. The problem, of course, with his argument is that much of it isn't exactly true. First of all, Greener cites a single poll in two of the cases (he refers only to a single Survey USA taken the day before the election when discussing the Ken Blackwell-Ted Strickland gubernatorial race and again with the Harold Ford vs. Bob Corker senatorial race) as opposed to referring to any sort of general trend in the polls. Furthermore, Greener's claim that "as of this writing, Barack Obama is not polling consistently above 50 percent in a number of electoral-vote-rich swing states, including Ohio and Florida" is misleading at best. Four of the last six polls in Ohio show Obama receiving between 50 and 53% of the vote (the remaining two show him at 49%). The polls in Florida are much tighter and less conclusive, but also potentially irrelevant (as are those in Ohio). Obama has been doing so well in Colorado, New Mexico and Virginia, where all but one of the last seven polls show Obama receiving between 51 and 54% of the vote that he doesn't actually have to win either Ohio or Florida to carry the election. Nate Silver also gives an excellent rebuke of Greener's argument here.

Undoubtedly the Democrats could still blow this election, but I doubt that it will be because of flocks of undecided voters secretly fall asleep musing dreamily about the prospect of McCain and Palin in the White House.