sg0508,
The economic meltdown in September 2008 solidified John McCain losing a Republican hold of the presidency…totally letting even non-analysts know, at that time, the result would be a Democratic pickup to elect Barack Obama the 44th president of the United States.
Wikipedia.org probably has the polls' numbers, nationwide and statewide, for the McCain-vs.-Obama matchup on a timeline.
My memory was that McCain's questionable leads were in part of August and right after the end of the 2008 Republican convention. (The Democratic convention was in the final week of August 2008. The Republican convention was one week later.) The Republican convention's end was between one and two weeks before the meltdown.
By the way: Some of the polls were b.s. This was especially the case with Rasmussen Reports, which didn't show an Obama lead in Ohio until the arrival of October. All other polls were showing the opposite. Rasmussen, clearly untrustworthy, was doing it deliberately. (It actually had the nerve to publish a poll showing McCain with a 10-point lead given George W. Bush's 2004 margin in Ohio was 2.11 to his 2.46 nationwide.)
The reasons why the 2008 incumbent White House party [the Republican Party] couldn't survive their efforts to hold the White House came in the form of George W. Bush. His low-approval numbers were the worst for an incumbent, in a non-incumbent presidential election year, since Harry Truman back in 1952. And that year, just like 2008, resulted in party-flipping of the presidency.
I still believe Mac had a shot after the RNC when polls were still tight. People still respected him. Then, the economic apocalypse just killed him. Add to that a charismatic challenger, and the rest was foretold.
