Today's Polls, 6/29

Hardly a full diet of polling today but just an amuse bouche. In Arizona, Rasmussen has the state's Senior Senator leading by 9 points; he had held a 20-point lead in Rasmussen's last poll of Arizona dated back in April. As I've pointed out before, Arizona -- with its older population and what remains a comparative lack of Democratic Party infrastructure -- would probably favor John McCain by 3-5 points even if he were not from there. Attempts by either campaign to claim Arizona as a swing state are probably just an exercise in spin.

Arguably the more interesting result is in the Gallup Daily Tracker, which shows Obama pulling 4 points ahead of McCain after having been tied with him for several days. When you see a result like this -- when a poll steps back into line with other polls -- it should not be read as momentum for one or another candidate so much as reversion to the mean. Nevertheless, just yesterday I was suggesting that there might have been just a smidgen of momentum toward John McCain in the polling numbers, and now that is harder to see.

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Today's Polls, 6/25

If yesterday was among Barack Obama's best polling days of the year, today's numbers have moved in the direction of John McCain. In addition to his drawing into a tie in the Gallup Tracking poll, the big number today is out of Missouri, where SurveyUSA shows McCain rebounding to a 7-point lead. SurveyUSA had conducted two Missouri surveys essentially simultaneously last month; they had shown Obama leading by 1 point and trailing by 2, respectively.

I don't have any cute explanation on hand for you. Obama hadn't seemed to have gotten much of a bounce in what we call the North Central part of the country -- essentially, the Midwest west of Lake Michigan -- but he had gotten quite a bit of one in Near South states like Kentucky and Arkansas, and Missouri is literally and figuratively half-way between those two regions. Almost all of the give in his numbers appears to have occurred in St. Louis, where Obama had been leading 59-31 before but in the new survey led just 52-45. Did Obama insult Albert Pujols or something? Critique the city's strange fixation with crab rangoon?

Obama also lost some ground in Nebraska, where Rasmussen has him trailing John McCain by 16 points; Obama had been within 11 a month ago. Rasmussen has not broken out Nebraska's results by congressional district, but the state probably has to be within about 10 points overall for either NE-1 or NE-2 to come into play and put two electoral votes on the table.

In California, however, Rasmussen has Obama opening up a gargantuan 28-point lead, which is double his margin from a month ago. Rasmussen attributes this result to McCain's right turn on offshore drilling, which is a reasonable enough explanation -- but again, the cognitive dissonance starts to kick in. If Obama gained so much ground in California, why did he seem to lose ground in Oregon, which is probably even greener?

Lastly, in Arizona, we have another weird poll to round out our afternoon. John McCain leads by 10 points in a new Cronkite/Eight poll. But the percentage numbers are very weird: McCain 38, Obama 28, and Undecided 34. That's a huge number of undecideds, which is not something that the Cronkite poll had really shown before. But with a sample size of just 175 persons, I'm not sure if it's worth reading that much into.

Sometimes, it's nice to just press a button, hope that your simulations are doing something sensible, and wait for more data. I continue to see this race as pretty flat right now -- Obama having achieved a bump of about four points which is neither growing nor abating, dramatic individual results to the contrary.

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'Zona Defense

Well, it worked. Ever since the McCain campaign put Arizona in a festive pink on its electoral map, Democratic blogs are starting to pick up and run with the notion that Arizona is a swing state. The warrant for the claim is pretty thin -- an internal poll leaked by a Democratic congressional candidate showed McCain ahead by just 5 points in an R+6 district. Against that, we have a relative abundance of statewide polling showing Obama no closer than 9 points (and often down by more than that) and the fact that it's McCain's home state.

The home state effect seems generally to be on the order of 6-7 points, but can vary a lot from candidate to candidate and state to state. It might be weaker for McCain than for some other candidates, as he tends more to be a United States Senator than someone who porkbarrels for his home state.

Still, even without that home state effect, Arizona would lag a few points behind pickup opportunities like Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada, largely because of its large retiree population. Is it possible that Obama could win Arizona? Sure (although our model assigns him only a 4 percent chance). Is Arizona likely to make the difference between winning and losing the election? Probably not.

Just for our collective edification, however, you can construct some pure Western strategies for Obama that come up with winning electoral margins. Let's say that Obama loses Ohio and Michigan, but wins Iowa, and everything East of the Mississippi goes as it did in 2004. If Obama sweeps the small "sorta, kinda, maybe" Western states that are polling in the single-digits -- these are Montana, Alaska, and North Dakota -- plus the more talked-about Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico, that would get him to 271 EV. So would Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Arizona. But we're a long way from being able to declare the state competitive.

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Today's Polls II, 5/22

I don't want to make a habit of this, but with four new polls out, there's enough for a midday update. And there's something for everyone to be happy (and unhappy) about.

In Virginia, SurveyUSA shows Barack Obama 7 points ahead of John McCain, a major reversal from last month when Obama was 8 points behind. The truth, assuredly, lies somewhere in between, and our weighted averages give McCain a 2-point lead in Virginia. Hillary Clinton's matchup was not polled by SurveyUSA.

But in Nevada, Rasmussen has Hillary Clinton ahead of John McCain by 5 points, whereas Obama trails him by 6. Rasmussen's last poll in Nevada was also somewhat tough on Obama (he was down by 3) but this is a major reversal for Clinton, who had been 10 points behind.

Rasmussen also polled California, showing 14- and 21- point leads for Obama and Hillary Clinton, respectively. Finally, a new Rocky Mountain poll in Arizona has John McCain 11 points ahead of Obama and 15 points ahead of Clinton.

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This Morning's Polls, 4/30

In New Jersey, a Monmouth/Gannett poll shows impressive-sized leads for both Democrats: Hillary Clinton leads John McCain by 14 points, while Barack Obama leads him by fully 24 points. This result is so optimistic for the Democrats as to frankly stretch credulity, and I know very little about the Monmouth/Gannett polling shop. At the same time, there have been a handful of decidely optimstic polling results for the Democrats in recent days (such as their performance in Indiana in the Selzer poll), while at the same time both are doing fairly well in the Rasmussen tracker. The conventional wisdom that the enlongated primary season may be hurting the Democrats does not have a lot of evidenciary wisdom behind it. As I have said before, it isn't when it ends that the problem, but how it ends that counts.

Also, in Arizona, an ASU/Cronkite poll has Barack Obama trailing home-stater John McCain by 9 points, and Hillary Clinton trailing him by 16. Home state effects typically run at about 6-7 points (although vary a lot from candidate to candidate), and so Arizona might be a fringe-competitive state for Obama if John McCain were not the nominee, though probably not for Clinton.

Although some of this is the result of our recent methodological changes, Barack Obama's Win Percentage is presently the highest it has been since April 2, and his electability edge over Clinton is the largest it has been since March 31.

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Today's Polls, 4/21

The only general election poll today is from Arizona, where Rasmussen has John McCain leading Barack Obama by 20 points, and Hillary Clinton by 28.

For the record, I would guess that the Arizona polls will close a bit -- I haven't verified this, but it seems likely that home state candidates have an especially large advantage early in the election cycle, when name recognition reigns supreme. Even in the best of times, however, Arizona -- with its older population and its stronger Republican institutions -- is the weakest of our four Southwest states for Obama, and it certainly won't be competitive against John McCain.

I've also added in the latest fundraising numbers from the FEC, which impact the regression numbers at the margins.

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Today's Polls, 4/11

The headliner today is a Rasmussen Reports survey of Pennsylvania, which contains good news for both Democrats in the Keystone, with Hillary Clinton leading John McCain by 9 points and Barack Obama leading him by 8. Clinton's numbers have consistently been pretty good in Pennsylvania -- she's been ahead in the last four polls by margins ranging from 3 points to 9 -- whereas Obama's have been all over the board. But this could potentially be a sign that Obama's general election numbers tend to improve in states where he runs an active primary campaign. It will be interesting to see whether there is any similar effect for the Democrats in Indiana and North Carolina.

Rasmussen also surveyed Louisiana: Obama trails McCain by 11 there, and Hillary by 22. This is something of a reversal from the numbers we usually see in the Deep South, where Clinton has generally outpolled Obama. One thing to watch for is that polls in non-competitive states can affect our regression equations as much as polls taken anywhere else, so Clinton for instance has taken a hit to her West Virginia numbers as a result of this survey, which has some commonalities with Louisiana in terms of education levels and religiosity.

Finally (and speaking of non-competitive states): in Arizona, McCain has a 22-point lead over both Democrats according to a Northern Arizona University poll.

ALSO, eagle-eyed observers will note that Minnesota has been moved from the Prairie region to the Great Lakes reason, which affects nothing but aesthetics, but it felt weird not having the Land of 10,000 Lakes grouped with its Great Lakes brethren.

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