With one month remaining in the 2008 presidential campaign, national and state polling data indicate that Barack Obama holds a clear lead over John McCain.

"Too close to call." "Within the margin of error." "A statistical dead heat." If you've been following news coverage of the 2008 presidential election, you're probably familiar with these phrases.

"Poll Finds Obama's Run Isn't Closing Divide on Race," reads the headline on the front page of the July 16th New York Times.

In a recent Crystal Ball article, Michael Baudinet of the University of Virginia Center for Politics argued that despite a very difficult national political environment for Republicans, John McCain has a good chance of winning the 2008 presidential election because he enjoys one key advantage over his Democratic rival, Barack Obama: McCain clinched his party's nomination three months earlier than Obama.

With the long and contentious Democratic nomination race finally winding down, the attention of the media and the public is beginning to shift to the general election. In November, voters will face a choice between two rather atypical presidential candidates.

Forget about soccer moms and NASCAR dads. The key voting bloc in 2008 is the white working class. According to the new conventional wisdom of American politics, the presidential candidate who can win the support of white working class voters will have the inside track on becoming the next president of the United States.

Discussions of the current political situation and comparisons between the 2008 election and earlier contests frequently overlook a crucial fact. As a result of changes in American society, today's electorate is very different from the electorate of twenty, thirty, or forty years ago.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the outcome of the Democratic presidential nomination will hinge on the votes of the party's so-called superdelegates, elected officials and party leaders who are automatically entitled to attend the Democratic nominating convention regardless of the results of the primaries and caucuses.

Several alert readers of last week's Crystal Ball article have contacted me in the past week to question my claim that the greatest threat to Republican unity in 2008 comes from moderates, not conservatives.

A lot of Republicans are unhappy with their party this year. Some conservative Republicans, following the lead of talk show hosts such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, have been threatening to sit out the November election or vote for a third party candidate because they don't consider their party's presidential nominee, John McCain, to be sufficiently conservative.