Today's Polls, 7/3

Barack Obama has a 5-point lead in Montana, according to a new poll from Rasmussen Reports. John McCain had led by 5 in their only previous poll of the state back in April.

It would, obviously, be premature to conclude that Obama is the favorite in Montana. Our regression model still thinks that the state ought to favor McCain by about 6 points, and will probably maintain that opinion until we see some other good results for Obama in (i) traditionally red states or (ii) states out West. Thus far, Obama's bounce had come mostly in blue and purple states east of the Mississippi, which is why this result is surprising.

But there are two things I think we can make of it. Firstly, it certainly validates Obama'a decision to campaign in North Dakota today. If you'll recall, Obama has already spent several days in Montana. Yes, that was nominally in connection with the state's Democratic primary, but at that point Obama was already 80 percent of the way to general election mode. While I don't think Obama is the odds-on favorite to win Montana, he very probably is the favorite if he runs a campaign there and McCain doesn't.

Secondly, we're seeing a bit of a cultural divide in Montana between cultural conservatives who have resided there for a long time, more libertarianish folks who have resided there for a long time, and new migrants who like the cheap land and beautiful scenery and bring more of a West Coast mentality to the state. In this poll, Obama leads by 27 points among Montanans who rarely or never attend church, and by 20 points among people who attend occasionally, but trails by roughly the same margins among people that go to church at least a few times a month.

A couple other polls out today too. In Rhode Island, which also hadn't been polled in a long time, Obama leads by 28 points in a Rhode Island College survey. This is not a surprise considering his recent results in Massachusetts and Connecticut. Speaking of which, there is yet another poll out in Connecticut, this one by Research 2000 on behalf of Daily Kos, which shows a 22-point lead for Obama (and suggests that Joe Lieberman would lose to Ned Lamont if that matchup were held today). Finally, a Strategies 360 poll in Washington has Obama ahead by 8.

n.b. Edited for maturity.

There's More...

Contract Post

Today's Polls, 7/2

So, I have a little bit more trouble getting worked up over polls in states like Massachusetts and Connecticut than I do in swingier parts of the country. But these are a very good set of numbers for Barack Obama, and I think they do tell us something.

There are two new polls out in Connecticut. Quinnipaic has Obama leading by 21 points, and Rasmussen has him ahead by 17. In the previous editions of those polls, Obama held leads of 17 and 3 points, respectively. The 3-pointer from Rasmussen might have been partially responsible for The McCain campaign's insistence that Connecticut was a toss-up, but it was the only poll conducted since the new year to have shown McCain within single digits of Obama in Connecticut.

Perhaps the more important news out of the state, however, is that Joe Liberman's approval ratings have fallen to 45 percent. A rating that low is relatively unprecedented for a Senator who was just re-elected 20 months ago and has not had a major scandal befall him. The piece of longer-term fallout from this is that we might now expect Liberman to try and make good with the Democrats if Barack Obama becomes President, figuring that he'll have four years to rehabilitate his reputation. Whether the Democrats would welcome him back is another question, but frankly I'd expect them to be so giddy if they won the Presidency that they might be in a generous mood. If John McCain becomes President, on the other hand, Lieberman had better hope that McCain has a 60 percent or better approval rating by the time they both come up for reelection in 2012.

In Massachusetts, Rasmussen has Barack Obama up by 20; that's up from 13 a month ago. And in New York, Rasmussen has his lead reaching 31 points -- it was a 19-point lead in late May.

So what's that little something these polls tell us? Whatever else the consequences of Obama's perceived shift to the center, it certainly hasn't cost him among the Democratic base.

There's More...

Contract Post

Today's Polls, 6/2

Two traditionally noncompetitive states are polling closer than usual today. In Connecticut, Rasmussen has John McCain just 3 points behind Barack Obama (McCain trails Hillary Clinton by 6 points). From the internals of the poll, Obama is having a little bit of trouble with the middle-class vote, while winning both working-class and wealthy voters. A lot of Hillary Clinton's support is concentrated among older, middle-class suburbanites, particularly in the Eastern half of the country, and it's possible that we're seeing some defections among that group here. Still, since Obama has been polling strongly elsewhere along the East Coast, this is probably also a case where we're observing some random noise.

Meanwhile, in North Carolina, Public Policy Polling has Barack Obama within 3 points of John McCain; Hillary Clinton trails McCain by 5. There are several states where Obama is in the 15-30 percent win probability range right now: North Carolina, Missouri, Florida, and a handful of Western states like Montana and North Dakota. If we think about the Western states as a group, Obama might need to pick and choose two or perhaps three of those states in which he wants to make a serious effort to compete (Missouri will almost certainly be one of them).

Also a correction: yesterday, we listed John McCain's margin over Obama in SurveyUSA's Nebraska poll as 12 points. In fact, the margin is 9 points. It looks like we had caught an earlier, unweighted version of that poll.

There's More...

Contract Post

Wish List

Following are the top ten states where I think we could use some fresh polling data.

10. Illinois. All the other big states get polled -- even the ones that aren't expected to be especially competitive. But Illinois seems to be taken for granted and hasn't been sampled since February. While that's understandable in Obama's case, the regression model thinks there's an outside chance that McCain could compete against Clinton in Illinois if there were a sufficient amount of backlash from Obama supporters. It would be nice to be able to test that hypothesis.

9. Connecticut. Another state that's more interesting in the Clinton scenario than the Obama scenario, but if Clinton is making progress with the white working class, it would be helpful to know if she's losing ground with the investor class. There's no better place to evaluate that than Connecticut, and previous polling had shown the Clinton-McCain matchup relatively close in this state.

7. North Dakota and 8. South Dakota. Every day that goes by, our model gives less weight to the tantalizing SurveyUSA poll from February that showed Obama four points ahead in North Dakota, and therefore his win percentage goes down there. But the Dakotas have decidedly moderate electorates, and with Obama polling extremely well in neighboring Minnesota recently, we're overdue for a check-up.

6. Massachusetts. SurveyUSA data has sometimes shown Massachusetts to be surprisingly close in the McCain-Obama matchup, whereas the only Rasmussen poll put Obama safely ahead. Getting a third opinion from a Suffolk or a University of New Hampshire would be helpful.

5. Montana. While Alaska has been polled surprisingly heavily, Montana really has not been. And yet, it might be the more plausible of the Big Sky states as it has more history of electing Democrats -- including darkhorse VP candidate Brian Schweitzer as well as John Tester and Bill Clinton (in 1992).

4. South Carolina. The Palmetto state has been polled just once, and that poll put Obama just three points behind. While we can certainly make some inferences about South Carolina based on the polling in North Carolina and Georgia, this state had a somewhat special relationship in securing the nominations of both McCain and Obama, and it would be interesting to examine the localized effects.

3. West Virginia. I was disappointed that we had a meaningful primary in West Virginia and yet didn't get a single general election poll out of it. While I don't expect the state to be competitive for Obama, it is so idiosyncratic demographically that it would help us to calibrate our estimates in other areas. And it certainly is an interesting state for Clinton on the chance that she gets the nomination.

2. Nevada. It's received considerably less polling attention than Colorado or New Mexico, and yet is just as important as a part of Obama's potential Western strategy. Moreover, it's a difficult state to get a hold on demographically, as it combines some extremely wealthy demographics with some extremely poor ones.

1. Michigan. Although Michigan has been polled some, it lags way behind Ohio and Pennsylvania in its depth of data and yet ranks second on both Obama's and Clinton's swing state lists. Particularly in light of Obama's recent visit to the state and the continuing debate over the disposition of its Democratic delegates, it would be interesting to have a better idea of where we stand.

There's More...

Contract Post

McCain within 3 of Clinton in California, Connecticut [UPDATED]

Once or twice a day, I'll do a quick scan through Google News to see if I can find any polls that haven't yet been picked up in the mainstream media. (BTW, for the true addicts out there, this time of night can be good to get "BREAKING" news, since this is about when many morning newspapers publish their online editions).

My search a few moments ago turned up a new PPIC poll in California (PDF), which shows McCain within 3 points of Hillary Clinton, and 9 of Barack Obama in the state.

Is Hillary likely to lose California? Not in a competitive election; Hillary is still 92% to win the state even after this poll is included, and for all its electoral votes, California does not yet show up on her Swing State list.

Still, there are some troublesome internals in here for Clinton, most notably her favorability ratings: 45 favorable, 52 unfavorable. Obama, by contrast, is 61/34 (McCain is 49/45). This from a solid, nonprofit pollster that has been polling its state for many years, and over a particularly large sample (2,002 respondents).

That means Hillary has something of a ceiling in California. On the other hand, it should not be too hard for her to reach her ceiling if she has any success at all in tying John McCain to George W. Bush, who is ridiculously unpopular in the state (just 57 percent of Republicans and 18 percent of independents approve of his performance).

UPDATE: McCain is also within three points in Connecticut, according to a new poll from Quinnipiac. Obama is ahead by 17. Also, as in California, Clinton's unfavorables beat her favorables (47-46). Connecticut has a relatively high number of independents (33% of the electorate in 2004, as opposed to 27% in California) and I find it more plausible that McCain could compete there than in Cali.

There's More...

Contract Post

Today's Polls, 3/15

Polls continue to come in at the lower end of the spectrum for both Democrats. In today's batch, that is somewhat more true for Clinton than for Obama.

Rasmussen has new polls out in California, Ohio, and Connecticut. In Ohio, McCain leads both Democrats by 6 points, a result that either balances out Survey USA's recent poll that had both Democrats ahead by 10 in that state, or shows in which direction this race is presently moving. In California and Connecticut, meanwhile, Obama has relatively safe leads over McCain, but McCain is within single-digits of Clinton:

State        Obama     Clinton
California   +15       +7
Connecticut  +12       +3
Ohio         -6        -6

We also tracked down an Ayers poll in Tennessee, which shows McCain leading Clinton by 8, and Obama by 17. Tennessee is a state in which we see Clinton potentially being competitive, but not Obama.

Overall, Obama's Win % is now at 60.0%, and Clinton's is at 40.3%. A week ago, they were at 62.4% and 42.8%, respectively.

There's More...

Contract Post