MORRIS

Posted at 8:12 a.m. ET

Dick Morris has been astute during this election year, identifying early the problems in John McCain's campaign.  How does he read the final week, leading to the election?  He believes the undecided vote is key, and can break McCain's way:

If current survey trends continue, Obama will finish with less than 50 percent in the polls. Even discounting the Nader vote (some people never learn), the undecided voters could tip the race either way. How will they break?

Since there is no incumbent, they cannot automatically be assigned to the challenger; and since turnout is likely to be huge, the current undecided voters will probably make their way to the polls and cast their ballots.

But for whom?

And...

As Obama has oscillated, moving somewhat above or somewhat below 50 percent in all the October polls, his election likely hangs in the balance. If he falls short of 50 percent in these circumstances, a majority of the voters can be said to have rejected him. Likely a disproportionate number of the undecideds will vote for McCain.

But don't write Obama off. His candidacy strikes such enthusiasm among young and minority voters that there is still a chance that a massive turnout will deliver the race to the Democrats...

...The effect of this increased vote is hard to calculate, but it may be enough to offset the undecideds who will vote for McCain.

But...

But the basic point, one week before Election Day, is that even if Obama clings to a four- or five-point lead over McCain in the polling, the election is not over. The question is not so much how large his lead is over the Republican, but whether or not he is topping 50 percent. As long as the polling leaves him below that mark, he is vulnerable and could well lose.

John Fund, in a talk I heard last night, also made the point that Obama has never exceeded, in the primaries, his last poll numbers.  So if his final poll numbers next Monday have him below 50 percent, he could be in trouble.

Clearly, in recent weeks, McCain has been able to cast Obama as a leftist. He has made the issue of income redistribution central to the campaign. With the aid of Joe the Plumber and the discovery of Obama's Chicago PBS interview, in which he lamented the absence of redistribution of wealth, McCain has made the proposition seem central to Obama's ideology.

Finally...

The audacity of Obama's injection of a social democratic concept borrowed from Western Europe into American politics is stunning. And almost half the voters seem to be buying it.

Maybe not.

October 29, 2008.