Today's Polls, 7/15

After a slow couple of weeks, the pollsters have been very busy in the past 48 hours:



So, what's going on here? A pretty decent set of results for Obama -- but also not ones out of line with our expectations. South Carolina and South Dakota are relatively competitive? We knew that based on how North Carolina and North Dakota had been polling. Iowa looks out of reach for McCain? It's looked that way all year, with the exception of one or two polls taken during the flooding. Obama's numbers look pretty good in the CBS/NYT and ABC/WaPo national polls? Those pollsters have tended to show relatively favorable results for the Democrats all year.

So what looks like a pretty interesting set of polling is really more of the same. Obama is polling a bit of his peak numbers (note that the trendline adjustment now tweaks his numbers downward in states like Florida), but he retains a meaningful lead in the popular vote and some structural advantages in terms of the electoral math.

(Full disclosure: I also caught a small bug that was failing to roll in the trendline adjustment properly in recent days and also overstating the third-party vote. This was inflating Obama's popular vote margin by half a point or so. It has been corrected.)

There's More...

Contract Post

Today's Polls, 6/26

Maybe the GOP can rebook its convention for Cleveland.

Quinnipiac is out with a series of polls in four swing states: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Colorado. Obama holds the lead in each one. In Minnesota, that lead is 17 points; in Wisconsin, 13 points; in Michigan, 6 points, and in Colorado 5.

Obviously, these are not the numbers that John McCain wants to see. But there's bad news and there's not-so-bad news for him here. The bad news in Wisconsin and particularly Minnesota, where Obama has shown a double-digit lead in multiple recent polls. Wisconsin has been extremely competitive in the past couple cycles, as has Minnesota to a lesser degree. But Barack Obama might not be the right Democrat against whom to put those states into play. For one thing, he's from the region, and for another, he tends to do well with white voters of mainline Protestant stock like the Lutherans found commonly in the Upper Midwest. As Sean pointed out last week, the Republicans have somewhat frequently held their convention in non-competitive states -- New York City in 2004 being the most obvious example -- but Minnesota was clearly intended to be symbolic of an expanded red map, and one now has to wonder whether John McCain will waste resources there to make a good show when his opportunities lie elsewhere.

The not-so-bad news is in Colorado and Michigan. Yes, McCain trails there, but by the same 5-6 point margin that Obama leads in national polls. That means if the national race goes back to being a near-tie, so most likely do Michigan and Colorado. This is how the McCain people have to read the polls nowadays: willingly suspend their disbelief, and ask what the map looks like if Obama gives back three, five, seven points across the board.

Incidentally, it is great news that Quinnipiac, by way of a partnership with the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, seems to be expanding the scope of its polling, as it had traditionally limited itself to a core of about five or six states. While Quinnipiac is not quite as strong as Rasmussen or SurveyUSA, it nevertheless has a considerably above-average track record, and it has made a determination to use huge sample sizes this year, which helps both with accuracy and in being able to break out the demographics.

Today's other result is in Tennessee, where Rasmussen has John McCain leading by 15 points. This is actually a pretty big improvement for Obama, who had trailed by 27 in Rasmussen's April poll of the Volunteer State. While Tennessee will not be competitive this year, the fact that Obama's numbers are bouncing in the Appalachian region -- we saw similar results recently in Kentucky -- does have a bearing in some other states, including Ohio and Pennsylvania. West Virginia, which should be something like 5-10 points better for Obama than Tennessee based on its political demographics, also warrants monitoring.

Finally, you might notice that Obama's overall win percentage has barely changed from yesterday. That is because our trend adjustment had already "priced in" this information; the actual results were quite close to its educated guesses in most of these states.

There's More...

Contract Post

Evening Polling Update, 6/19

I very much do not want to set an expectation that we're going to be running the numbers more than once a day, but with polling volume especially heavy lately, we're making some accommodations. There is new polling out in Georgia and Colorado, each of which shows the race tightening.

Rasmussen conducted the Colorado poll, which has Barack Obama with a 43-41 lead. That 2-point advantage is down from 6 points a month ago. But in Georgia, Insider Advantage has that state tightening to a single point; John McCain leads 44-43, with 6 points going to Bob Barr. Insider Advantage's prior poll in Georgia, which also included Barr in the match-ups, had John McCain ahead by 10.

Earlier this week, I ripped on the Obama campaign for designating Georgia as a swing state. No previous polling had shown Obama within single digits there -- a Rasmussen poll conducted the day after the primaries ended had it McCain +10. I doubt that the state is truly within the margin of error right now. But it is certainly close enough -- with the known unknowns of the Barr vote and African-American turnout -- to be included in Obama's ad buy, as the candidate is doing. This may also be a reminder that you can often infer something about a campaign's internal polling in a state before the public data catches up. The McCain camp, for their part, seems as pleased as a peach:

The McCain campaign on Thursday said they welcome Obama's expenditure.

"We're obviously overjoyed when Barack Obama spends money in a state that we are very, very confident that John McCain will carry in November," McCain spokesman Jeff Sadosky said.

As to the Colorado result: the patterns here are getting harder rather than easier to detect, but just as he's gotten an especially large bounce out of Appalachia, there is a certain type of state where Obama has gotten little bump at all, or his numbers have even ticked downward. These are the states that I sometimes think of as the Great White North: places like Oregon and Washington, and Minnesota, and Colorado. These states have fair numbers of Democrats but, with the possible exception of Minnesota, they don't tend to be as institutionally Democratic as states East of the Mississippi. They remain among Obama's best states, but he may be running into some kind of ceiling in terms of partisan support.

There's More...

Contract Post

Convention Choices and Electoral Offense

One of the striking elements early on in the 2008 presidential race was how both major parties selected convention sites designed for offense. The Republicans chose Minneapolis-St. Paul, reflecting an ambition to make gains in the Upper Midwest. The Democrats chose Denver, reflecting their ambition to build upon recent gains in the Intermountain West.

In recent years, the Democrats chose safe locations – Boston (2004), Los Angeles (2000), Chicago (1996), and New York (1992). Not since 1988 (Atlanta) had the Democrats strayed outside their comfort zone, and before that came San Francisco (1984), New York (1980) and New York (1976).

The Republicans have generally chosen equally non-competitive territory – New York City (2004), San Diego (1996), Houston (1992), New Orleans (1988), and Dallas (1984). Only Philadelphia in 2000 marked a convention site in a swing state.

Both parties had reason to be hopeful. The once-liberal bastion Minnesota, which had been the sole Mondale state in 1984, had been surprisingly close in 2004. John Kerry only carried the state by 3.5%. Neighboring Iowa flipped blue-to-red from 2000 to 2004 by 10,000 votes, and neighboring Wisconsin was the single closest percentage state in 2004, a state Kerry carried by a mere 0.4%. Looking at the map objectively, this region seemed ripest to add new electoral votes into the Republican column.

The Democrats looked over the same red-blue stalemate map of the previous two presidential elections and chose Colorado to host its convention despite the fact that labor problems and funding concerns in Denver made New York seem the easier logistical choice. Bush beat Kerry in the state by just under 100,000 votes out of a little over 2.1 million cast, less than 5%. That margin was down from 9% in 2000. Similarly, Nevada was tightening as its population boomed, from 3.6% in 2000 down to 2.6% in 2004. New Mexico was under 1% margin in both elections.

Ironically, despite the narrow previous elections, the realistic opportunity for Dems to play offense with a state like Colorado and the Mountain West as a whole was not as clear-cut at the time Denver was chosen. When Denver was announced on January 11, 2007, the conventional wisdom was that Hillary Clinton would be the nominee, and it’s hard to think of a worse match than the gun control poster child Hillary Clinton and the libertarian-striped Mountain West Dem brand. (Barack Obama is to Appalachia as Hillary Clinton is to the Mountain West, and the polling data backs this up.)

But now that Obama is the nominee, we see that his opportunity to win Colorado is significant. Based on 538’s projection model, Obama currently leads by 5.9% over McCain. In New Mexico, Obama projects to win by 5% even, and in Nevada by 2.4%.

On the flip side, McCain is not currently competitive in Minnesota, projecting to lose by 12%. Iowa, where McCain finished a distant fourth in his party’s caucus vote behind Fred Thompson (Fred Thompson!) looks equally dismal for Republican hopes at a 9.1% deficit. Wisconsin isn’t much brighter a prospect, where Obama projects to win by 7%.

Perhaps McCain has an opportunity in Michigan, a Democratic state since 1992. Obama has gotten off the mark slowly there, in no small part because it was one of the two states where Democrats did not campaign during the primaries thanks to geniuses like Carl Levin.

All in all, however, the Democratic opportunity to play offense with its regional convention pick seems much better than the Republican opportunity.

There's More...

Contract Post

Today's Polls, 5/21 [UPDATED]

One of our largest collections of polling data in some time:



Big picture here?

For Obama, his electoral map is sharpening. He's presently winning all Kerry states except for New Hampshire, although he makes up for that with a safe-looking lead in Iowa. In order to win the election, he'll either need to:

1) Win Ohio (while holding Michigan and Wisconsin), or
2) Win two or three of the Western "four corner" states (NV, CO, NM) and either Ohio or Michigan.

By contrast, the "Southern Strategy" of putting states like North Carolina, Virginia and Florida into play does not appear to be polling especially strongly for him at the moment. If he needs a third alternative, he might stand a better chance by aiming to flip the Midwest-Southern hybrid states of Missouri (where he's still trailing, but these numbers are an improvement) and Indiana.

As for Clinton, she's had a couple of weeks where she's been polling pretty strongly everywhere. I would not pay especially much attention to the SurveyUSA poll showing her ahead by 6 in North Carolina. I am not saying it is an 'outlier'; I agree with Charles Franklin's philosophy that there is no such thing as an outlier. But this is the whole point of taking a weighted average of polls, and other polling in North Carolina has not shown her especially competitive.

Nevertheless, Clinton certainly seems to have improved her hand in the South -- I haven't looked to see whether she's getting more of the white Southern vote, or whether some black Southerners are starting to come back to her. The Florida and Missouri numbers definitely look good for her.

Somewhat counterintuitively, Clinton may actually have the broader electoral map than Obama, putting at least as many red states into play but also having more blue states that she'd need to defend. And for the time being, it is probably also the stronger electoral map, although the Obama folks can argue -- not unreasonably -- that things will change once the Democrats unify behind Obama, and also that Clinton's map would look different had she been taking the frontrunner's heat that Obama has been.

UPDATE: Inserted SurveyUSA's California poll, and corrected the sample size on Missouri. It was actually quite a large poll (1,523 respondents), helping both Democrats.

There's More...

Contract Post

Today's Polls, 4/18

Four polls today on the general election side, but none of them are particularly newsworthy.

In Indiana, SurveyUSA conducted a poll on behalf of the Mike Downs Center (Real Clear Politics lists the poll as "Downs Center", but the field work was done by SurveyUSA, and so that's how we'll list it). John McCain leads Barack Obama by 7 points, and Hillary Clinton by 11. Although Obama could conceivably win Indiana on a good Election Day, its demographics -- amorphous as they are -- probably aren't as favorable to him as other "reach" states like North Carolina or Montana. It does make a token appearance toward the bottom of his Swing State list, however. The more interesting result is on the Democratic primary side, where SurveyUSA now shows Obama with a 5 point lead after having trailed by 16 points just days ago.

SurveyUSA also has a poll out in Washington: Obama +13, Clinton +3. Although the topline number is better for Obama, Clinton goes from being a slight underdog against John McCain to a slight favorite on the strength of this survey.

And briefly: Quinnipiac has Clinton up 12 in her adopted home state of New York; Obama leads by 8. And Rasmussen -- video only at this time -- has Obama up by 3, but Clinton trailing by 14 in Colorado. Each of those surveys serves to correct recent polls that appeared to be outliers in each state (TargetPoint in CO, Marist in NY), but are otherwise fairly consistent with our long-term averages.

There's More...

Contract Post

Today's Polls, 4/17: Obama takes a hit, with caveat

SurveyUSA has a new round of polling out in more than a dozen states. Let's run the numbers first and then let's talk.



These are generally, although not uniformly, a poor set of polls for Barack Obama. The ones that are perhaps especially problematic for him are in Virginia and New Mexico, states where SurveyUSA has generally showed him running fairly well. The Ohio result, naturally, is important, although that's consistent with what we've seen in other polling. And SurveyUSA shows a close race for Obama in Massachusetts, as it has all cycle; it would be nice to be able to look at another pollster's numbers on that race.

As you can see, Obama's win percentage against John McCain has declined to its lowest ever number, 41.4%, which leaves him essentially tied with Hillary Clinton, who is presently at 40.2%. When we began this project, the polls indicated that Obama was at a hair over 60% to win an election against John McCain; that number has now fallen by more than 20 points.

But for the Obamaphiles in the crowd who are inclined to panic, a couple of things to keep in mind: Firstly, even in a bad set of surveys, Obama retains some areas of strength. These are, particularly, the Pacific Northwest region and our North Central (e.g. Upper Midwest) region. In Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, as well as in Washington and Oregon, Obama is likely to win fairly easily, whereas all of those states are in play in a Clinton-McCain contest. It's these states, plus neighboring Michigan -- which will not be a slam dunk for Obama but appears to be a better state for him than for Clinton -- that account for why Obama is still at least tied with Clinton overall, in spite of performing worse than her in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida.

Secondly, notice that the SurveyUSA polls were taken over the weekend, just as the bittergate controversy was hitting the radar. Keep in mind my prediction about bittergate, which is that it would have no real impact on the Democratic primary numbers, but perhaps a couple of points worth of medium-term impact on Obama's general election numbers. So far, that prediction has been pretty well borne out.

The other dynamic in play here is something that I call 'timing bias': pollsters tend to release surveys in the wake of major news events. Consider, for instance, that the last time SurveyUSA released a big set of polls was just as the Jeremiah Wright controversy was breaking. Naturally, pollsters (and the clients they work for) want to gauge the electoral reaction to important events in the news cycle. But really, if you buy one of my fundamental arguments about polling, which is that most bounces are just that -- temporary aberrations in the polling numbers -- these are the very worst times to release polls. And it cuts both ways. If, say, Obama wins Indiana, and essentially concludes the nomination with an 'upset' victory, we'll probably see a lot of polls released in the aftermath of that. Those numbers too, I'm guessing, would likely show a fairly big bounce for Obama -- and that bounce too, I'm guessing, might well prove to be ephemeral. It's helpful to have a pollster like Rasmussen on hand, which releases its polling data in dribs and drabs, rather than in big chunks.

Thirdly, our previous analysis shows that with a unified Democratic party behind him, Obama is likely to have a superior hand to play to Clinton's.

With all that said, there's no doubt that Obama's electability numbers have taken a hit. For one set of advocates, that is precisely the reason to draw the Democratic nomination process to a close, and for the other set, it is precisely the reason to continue it.

p.s. One result I wouldn't worry about for Obama: the TargetPoint poll showing him trailing McCain by 12 points in Colorado. Whatever hit Obama has taken, it does not appear to be in states like Minnesota and Washington, that are similar to Colorado demographically. And TargetPoint surveyed this contest on behalf of a Republican advocacy firm, and over small (~300 voters) sample sizes.

There's More...

Contract Post

Today's Polls, 3/19

We have a fairly heavy dosing of polling data today, and little of it is good news for Barack Obama:

State

Agency

Date