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.)

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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.

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McCain VP: Pawlenty Guarantees MN, WI?

Yesterday, James Pethokoukis of US News and World Report reported that Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty is high in the running for John McCain's VP selection. The claim from the source for the story, "a high-ranking McCain campaign official," also accompanies a mention that internal polling shows Pawlenty "delivering" both Minnesota and Wisconsin to McCain in the fall.

Wow, I had no idea it was that easy. Just name a guy as VP, and because he's from the region, a couple states you look like a longshot to win suddenly become yours. I mean, they should totally do that; it's a no-brainer.

Minnesota's last ten public polls have showed Obama leading in 9 instances, and the one instance McCain led was 47-46 by SurveyUSA in mid-March. Since then, SurveyUSA's once a month polling has shown Obama with leads of +6, +5 and +1 (their February poll had Obama +7). Rasmussen has shown Obama leads of 14, 15 and 13. The Star-Tribune poll of 1117 respondents in mid-May had Obama up 13 points. 538 regression analysis puts Obama in front by 9.3%, and predicts a 10.4% win.

In Wisconsin, it's Rasmussen who has the race somewhat close, with its June 5 poll putting Obama up by 2, its May 5 poll McCain up by 4, and its late March poll showing McCain up 2. Unfortunately for McCain, those two Rasmussen polls in March and early May are the only Wisconsin public polls that have McCain in front. SurveyUSA's last 5 polls have Obama up 9, 6, 5, 4 and 11, working from this past Sunday back to late February. As is the case in Minnesota, the trend is going Obama's way, with 538 regression putting Obama 8.2% in front and projecting an 8.4% win.

McCain's internal polling apparently says Minnesotans are homers under the Pawlenty Theory. Or, the spin is that Kerry's 3.5% win in 2004 is the biggest margin by which Obama can beat McCain whereas McCain can siphon that off with a strategic VP pick, and all the polls showing a much, much wider lead in Minnesota are a mirage.

But of course, if you pick a governor from one state as vice-president, that carries so much weight that even citizens of neighboring states suddenly fall in line. A hundred thousand Wisconsin voters who were planning to vote Obama just think, "hey, I totally heard that guy Pawlenty is from near this state, I don't really have a strong opinion on any other factor in this race, I gotta flip my vote from what I am currently telling pollsters!" (Obviously, telling pollsters by representative sample).

Did we mention Obama's Illinois also borders Wisconsin? So let's thread this needle for Wisconsin voters. Gotta not have very strong opinions about Obama or McCain to start. Have to be wishy-washy and flippable. They have to absorb the info - as low-info voters or ambivalent voters or low-frequency voters - to assign weight and value to the fact that the lower-tier candidate is from a neighboring state, while not assigning weight and value to the fact that the higher-tier candidate from the other party is from a neighboring state. They then have to elevate that factor's meaning over and above the meanings of other arbitrary factors you hear from people who are low-info voters. Such as any factors that go into the reality that only 17% of the country, low-info voters included, thinks the country is on the right track.

Now, anyone who's talked to thousands of voters on the phones and at their doors and in random conversations knows that the reasons low-info voters come up with are almost uniformly frightening in terms of that person's mental processes on politics. And I mean that in a non-partisan way, whether the output of the bizarre calculation they share with you is support of your candidate or the opposition. The good news is nobody gets to be offended by this; if you're reading this post you already aren't a low-info voter. (Though I'm sure someone will entertainingly point out in comments how opinions like these are ruining the purity and sanctity of the site.) Regardless of all the obligatory paeans you hear to the Great Judgment of the American People from the talking heads, one always comes away from such discussions feeling depressed about how much dead weight there is out there in terms of informed citizenry.

It's important to understand that, almost by definition, the quirky calculus of low-info voters isn't subject to en masse influence by any particular trivia-quality factor such as VP's home state. It's nearly a tautology. To be persuadable by new information, you have to absorb that information. You have to think things like, "I like that guy and I'm gonna vote for him," which assumes you already have a basis for forming your opinion. And once you're down that road, you probably have a basic opinion about which of Obama or McCain you like better. Of course there are exceptions, but the point is they don't exist in the large numbers that would be required to change the bottom line outcome.

Granted, as a general rule, private, internal-use campaign polling is usually much better than public polling. So McCain's internal polling is supposedly identifying voters so much on the fence and so much under the powerful, hypnotic sway of Tim Pawlenty that they will flip their soft support, or come out and vote instead of sitting home. Or, McCain's internal polling shows something wildly different from what 538 projects for those two states.

Color Camp Obama unimpressed; they don't even list Minnesota in their top 17 most competitive states, not even bothering to send any of their 3,600 Organizing Fellows to Minnesota (Wisconsin gets some). That should tell you everything you need to infer what the internal private polling is telling Obama about Minnesota. And the big advertising buy in 18 states doesn't include Minnesota either.

Something tells me this is 2 parts internal political jockeying by Pawlenty patrons within the McCain camp, 1 part run-of-the-mill political hype. (McCain has his Lanny Davises and Terry McAuliffes too, though those two are absurdists for the ages, see links.)

At the end of the day, McCain may well pick Pawlenty, and there would be endless blather about how the Republicans are going to leverage Pawlenty's overwhelming 1%, 21,000 vote (out of nearly 2.2 million cast) Minnesota gubernatorial re-election win in 2006 into automatic electoral success in the fall. I'm not really sure Bridge Collapse Guy is going to be able to hit Barack Obama on inexperience, for example.

Finally, John McCain is in Ottawa (Canada) for a press conference today, and Pawlenty is a hockey fan, which gives me the transparently flimsy excuse I was seeking to get in a mention of the NHL Draft tonight in Ottawa. Who among us isn't hanging on who the St. Louis Blues will take with the 4th pick? Maybe the exact same number of Minnesotans and Wisconsans who would have voted for Obama but for Pawlenty.

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Today's Polls, 6/17

An odd day of polling, but one attention-grabbing result dominates the rest. That is from Ohio, where Public Policy Polling has Barack Obama ahead by 11 points. While Public Policy Polling developed a reputation as being somewhat Obama-friendly in the primaries, its track record is fairly strong, and its prior Ohio poll -- taken way back in March -- had shown McCain ahead by 8 points. As Ohio is probably the single most important state in this election (it's by no means the only important state, but it's pretty darned important), this result is enough to drive Obama past the 67 percent threshold in our overall electoral projection; we presently have him as about a 2:1 favorite to win the election.

In Minnesota, however, SurveyUSA has Obama with just a 1-point lead over McCain. SurveyUSA's methodology takes a more fluid view of party identification, and so it tends to produce results that can be more encouraging for the non-dominant party in a particular state. Its most recent previous Minnesota poll, taken back in May, had shown Obama ahead by 6 points.

In North Carolina, Civitas has John McCain ahead by 4 points -- down a tick from the 5-point lead he held a month ago. Obama has yet to show a lead in North Carolina, but has trailed by somewhere between 2 and 4 points in the three most recent polls of the state.

There is also a SurveyUSA poll out in Kentucky that shows Obama trailing by 12 points. This poll made it across our wires too late to be included in our metrics, but it speaks to the extent that Obama is starting to improve his numbers among lapsed, Clinton-leaning Democrats, particularly in Appalachia. Obama had trailed by 24 points in Survey USA's May poll of Kentucky, and by as many as 36 points previously.

There are also a series of national polls out, all of which have consolidated in the area of Obama +4, exactly the popular vote margin that we attribute to him based on the state-by-state polling results.

So what to make of the meme that Obama's numbers haven't been bouncing? The only way that you can come to that conclusion is if you cherrypick results. There have been a few dozen polls released since Clinton conceded the primaries, and our methodology extracts an average bounce of about 4 points between them. Four points is not so large that some individual polls won't show a bounce, particularly if the bounce is concentrated in particular states and regions. But bounce Obama has, and the longer Republicans remain in denial about it, the less time they'll have to catch up.

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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.

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Today's Polls, 6/13

The Republicans have given every signal of wanting to make a play for Minnesota. Their convention will be held in St. Paul, and Tim Pawlenty is perhaps the odds-on favorite to become John McCain's Vice Presidential nominee. There just isn't much indication, however, that the state is liable to be competitive.

Rasmussen's newest poll in Minnesota has Barack Obama leading John McCain by 13 points. This is technically not a bounce: Obama led by 12 and 13 points in Rasmussen's April and May polls, respectively. But Minnesota also does not appear to be close enough where little things like the selection of Pawlenty as McCain's running mate would matter (I'm sitting on some research about this, but the home state advantage of a VP selection is not all that it's cracked up to be). Indeed, the entire Northwest quadrant of the country -- draw a line from the southern tip of Illinois everywhere northward and westward -- has polled extremely well for Barack Obama, both absolutely and relative to John Kerry.

Rasmussen also has polling out in North Carolina, where John McCain holds on to a slim 2-point advantage. This result is not entirely surprising, as several polling firms have shown North Carolina within the margin of error at some point in the cycle. Barack Obama has every reason to give North Carolina a try -- the Research Triangle portion of the state might go for him 3:2 or even 2:1. But at some point, he's going to want to show an actual lead in the polling there, lest it become a tease state like the Republicans have had with New Jersey.

In Oklahoma, a Research 2000 / DailyKos poll has John McCain leading by 14 points. This might actually be Obama's best result of the day, as other Oklahoma polling had shown McCain ahead by as many as 40 points. Obama won't win Oklahoma, but the internals of the survey -- which show a bare plurality of Oklahomans identifying their party ID as Democrat -- are a reminder of just how difficult the partisan landscape is for John McCain.

Finally, I wanted to announce that FiveThirtyEight will be partnering with Rasmussen Reports and providing them with our state-by-state averages for inclusion in their Balance of Power Calculations. Between that and my appearance on CNN a bit earlier (video if and when it becomes available), I'm starting out my day pretty wired.

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Today's Polls, 6/3

SurveyUSA has released a whole bunch of data within the past 24 hours related to the series of Vice Presidential surveys they conducted last week:



The result that has gotten the most buzz is Obama's +2 in Missouri. What's a little bit unusual is that SurveyUSA appears to have conducted a second Missouri poll over the same period, which included Senator Clinton's numbers rather than the VP matchups. So far as I can tell, these are completely separate polls (they have different sample sizes, for instance) and so we will continue to list both of them. And really, they're close enough to one another that it probably isn't worth sweating the difference; both point toward Missouri being competitive in November. With that said, those who argue that Obama performs better when Hillary Clinton's name isn't mentioned in the survey could point to this as evidence.

Obama's numbers out on the Pacific Coast look very good, as they have been in almost all polling recently. On the other hand, McCain is a bit closer than expected in Minnesota and Massachusetts, but that has been a consistent facet of SurveyUSA polling in those states. SurveyUSA polls appear to be less hewed to party identification than those of most other agencies, so just as they tend to show Obama polling a bit closer in red states like Nebraska, they also tend to show McCain more competitive in certain blue states.

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