Today's Polls, 7/10

McCain and Obama are tied in North Dakota?

This isn't news if you've been reading this website for any length of time. Way back in February, before there was even any polling in these states, the beta versions of our regression models were showing Obama competitive in Montana and the Dakotas. That's pretty much how the polling has come in all cycle long.

His reasons for competing in those regions are slightly different between the two different states -- as we learned on the final day of the Democratic primary, there are tangible differences between Montana and the Dakotas electorally. North Dakota is classically moderate; its relatively high education levels and relatively low incidence of evangelical conservatives also play well for Obama. Montana is more libertarian, a group that appears to inclined to like Obama. These are not, by any means, the most important states in this election -- ranked according to our new swing state rankings, Montana and North Dakota rank 16th and 19th, respectively, in terms of their likelihood of alerting the outcome of the election (Alaska is 20th and South Dakota 27th). But on a dollar-for-dollar basis, they are about as good as it gets.

One caution: this poll was taken in the immediate aftermath of an Obama visit to North Dakota, which garnered him some very favorable local press coverage. We still have each of these states tipping to McCain at the end -- but not by such a margin that he can blow them off without risking their electoral votes.

There is further good news for Obama in Wisconsin, where Rasmussen now has Obama with a 10-point lead. Four other recent Wisconsin polls had all shown the state at roughly this margin; Rasmussen had been the holdout, as Obama led by just 2 in their June edition. Wisconsin is a state that McCain probably just has to cut loose; there's also a school of thought that Obama has an extra point or two of give in these numbers once the students get back to UW-Madison in the fall.

By the way, there is a Democrat who displayed this particular strength in the farm states before: Michael Dukakis, who won Wisconsin by 3, Minnesota by 7 and Iowa by 10 in an election that he lost by 8 points overall. Dukakis also outperformed his national numbers in South Dakota (the only other Democrat to have done so in recent times was native son George McGovern). So there does seem to be some particular node on the matrix where Democrats to well in this region -- fortunately for Obama, he appears to accompany it with a lot more strengths elsewhere than Dukakis had.

Ironically, this is coupled with some not-so-great numbers for Obama in Illinois, where Rasmussen has him ahead by only 11. On the one hand, this result would not be completely shocking: I've generally shown the home-state advantage to be worth something like 6-7 points, and if you took Obama's roughly 4 point margin in Ohio and Michigan and added that cushion to it, you'd get right at this number. But Illinois has polled substantially better than Ohio and Michigan in the last couple of cycles for the Democrat. I think, certainly, we can take the over on that 11-point number; on the ground here in Chicago, I haven't detected any kind of organic, anti-Obama sentiment. But there may be something to the notion that a candidate gets an extra bit of scrutiny from his home state at different stages of the process, particularly at the point where he ceases to become their senator and instead instead the nation's candidate.

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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.

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On Brian Schweitzer as VP

Last night, Senator Jon Tester impishly threw Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer's name into the ring as a potential VP choice. That set off a bunch of thoughts, because I have a closer perspective on Schweitzer than most bloggers. Without going into too much detail, I've worked a short while in Montana politics, enough to feel relatively confident in the following analysis.

The first time I heard Brian Schweitzer speak, I thought: "This guy is going to be President." That is not a common reaction on my part to politicians. I've listened to hundreds and hundreds of Democratic politicians speak, and I've only had that reaction twice in my lifetime. The first was Barack Obama, the second was Brian Schweitzer.

People have asked me what it was that made me feel so strongly in reaction, and the way I'd put it now is that Brian Schweitzer and Barack Obama are the two "new Democrat" styles that are extremely effective in the post-Clinton era. Both emphasize solutions over partisanship. Both are suspected by Republicans of talking a good game of bipartisanship and hewing to traditional Democratic Party ideology. Both are great communicators, but with different rhetorical strengths. Obama rose from an mainly urban and intellectual background; Schweitzer's breakthrough is probably the single best example of why the Democrats chose Denver as the convention site this year.

In addition to being a strong speech-giver, Schweitzer is a gifted quote-machine. He regularly delivers the glib, funny ways of both explaining his position on policy and mocking his opponents for their unreasonableness. It's hard to think of a more effective way of developing popularity among voters who think of themselves as uncomplicated common sense types. His most notable one-liner is actually a counterpose to the legacy of national Clinton branding of the Democratic Party: "Gun control is you control your gun and I'll control mine." It's glib, it's memorable, it communicates exactly where he stands, it's populist.

It matters when you can give voters lines like that, because the real sell-job is one regular voter to another. When one guy in the barber shop says, what do you think about this guy Schweitzer, is he one of those Democrats who want to take away everyone's guns? The other regular guy remembers that line and repeats it, and now the first guy just learned Schweitzer's position even if he's a low info voter. Low info voters are the voters with whom Obama has the most trouble. None of the names bandied about in the VP talk are in Schweitzer's league when it comes to this ability.

This way of speaking is not accidental. Schweitzer has made an amateur study of right wing radio, to understand how to turn the effective glibness those toxic hosts use for their own benefit into his advantage. Schweitzer is a hell of a smart guy. A soil scientist and rancher, he spent 6 years in Saudi Arabia working on irrigation projects. He speaks fluent Arabic and has an intuitive grasp of the region based on real life experience. Certainly that would open him up to the sleazy email "Manchurian Candidate" stuff, especially as the radical Islamic Hussein Osama's running mate. But I have a feeling, knowing Schweitzer, he'd be asked about it and his response would have people slapping their foreheads in laughter with, "Yes! That's the perfect reply!"

As far as other stats, Schweitzer is one of Al Giordano's Catholic governors. He is known for energy policy, which aligns with Obama's comments about wanting to find a running mate with executive experience and energy policy expertise.

He's young (52), and if Obama were to somehow lose the presidency this year, I would immediately look into a futures bet on Schweitzer. In my mind, Schweitzer would be the clear front runner for 2012, regardless of whether he'd been on the ticket this time or not.

Now, here are a few halts on the idea. First, I've talked directly to family members who seem to honestly be saying Schweitzer doesn't have these national ambitions. I take those things seriously, but I also know that being asked to be VP would almost certainly be accepted, as Jon Tester said last night. Things change when it's real, when it's right there in your lap.

Second, Schweitzer, for all the attention and high profile he's gotten from Stewart, Colbert, 60 Minutes, the Candy Crowleys and Joe Kleins, as well as his hero status in the Democratic political blog world, Schweitzer actually doesn't have a big resume. He's only been governor of a small population state for 4 years. As a good friend who has extensive experience with both Schweitzer and Obama has pointed out, this would not necessarily be the best way to fend off the "inexperience" charge that will be leveled at Obama.

My reaction to that argument is that I take Obama's confidence at its face value - he is looking for quality people period, and willing to do battle on the attack ground of inexperience if necessary. If the truth is that this X is the right candidate, then Obama picks X and relies on his ability to meet that argument head-on and win. Moreover, I don't think the mood of the country really cares about length of resume right now. They want people with solutions, and incumbency starts out having to prove itself as a valuable quality rather than part of the problem.

Another argument against Schweitzer, the one I have long thought most persuasive, is that while most have tended to think Montana is undergoing a blue revolution, the Democrats in Montana have a much thinner bench than most realize and his departure to run on a national ticket would hurt Montana Dems badly. Take Schweitzer out of the governor's mansion, his Lieutenant Governor is a Republican. There's no obvious replacement. If Schweitzer chooses to accept a VP offer, he knows he's going to leave a mess and some unhappy allies who are negatively affected.

Now, if Tester says he'd probably take it, he'd probably take it. You notice he hesitated a bit, and I can assure you that the hesitation is all about what the ripples would be back home. Schweitzer is very popular in Montana, he came out of the 2007 Legislative Session debacle looking far better than his Republican counterparts did (in no small part because of his gift for producing quote after quote about the situation that made him look sane, reasonable and the bigger man). But a valid criticism is that Schweitzer's roster of drafted Dems to run for legislative seats in 2006 was weak at best. Montana had the only state legislative chamber that flipped blue to red in the 2006 wave. The 100-member House had been barely blue, and by 3 votes in Laurel, Republicans took back the chamber, leading to a nightmarishly confrontational Session. (Ironically, the field staffer assigned to Laurel was one who Schweitzer's brother had to be talked down from demanding his dismissal for a harmlessly-intended but poorly executed joke in a local meeting just weeks before the election.)

Montana Republicans have it in for Schweitzer. They want his head on a platter. They hate his popularity. They were willing to go nuclear in 2007's Session to undermine him. Ironically, while Schweitzer will win easy re-election against the painfully nasal Roy Brown, it's an uphill battle to hold the 26-24 Senate, much less take back the 51-49 House (one of those is a Constitution Party member who caucuses with Republicans). Particularly if Schweitzer's candidate drafting ability does not dramatically improve. If Republicans have both chambers in the 2009 Session, the #1 agenda will be to thwart Schweitzer from having any legacy after 8 years to go national.

The upshot of the Montana situation is that if Schweitzer grasps that (and I think he's savvy enough to see all the angles which are more numerous and complex than I've outlined), he might just take an offer from Obama if it comes. It's risky, because he might leave behind an ugly state situation in a vacuum and I do think he cares about that.

Will an offer from Obama come? I am probably the only poker player who has the mp3 of this year's Mansfield-Metcalfe Obama speech on his iPod shuffle. When I hear that speech, it's clear from Obama's reference to Schweitzer that he has great admiration for the governor's skill. "And how about this guy?" is how he starts out. It's obvious Obama has great appreciation for Schweitzer's talent. Obama clearly sees Schweitzer's gifts. You know Obama's thought about him as VP.

But from my reports, which well could be incomplete, is that Schweitzer had not exactly embraced Obama. I don't know why, and again I stress that this is from people I trust who have proven to have great feel for Montana politics in the past, but I cannot guarantee its accuracy. Without going into the personal, I know at least one person very close to Brian who had flirted with the Clinton camp from the early going. It adds up to there being something less than the enthusiastic support offered by Kaine, Sebelius, Richardson, Napolitano, etc.

One big advantage of adding Schweitzer to the ticket would be his ability to play the perfect VP role of constantly tweaking John McCain in the language that would reach the so called "working class white vote" that has the collective punditocracy up in "Oh Noesville!!1!!11!" Tweaking John McCain from two different rhetorical angles would resonate on a much wider platform. And tweaking thin-skinned John McCain drives John McCain out of his mind with rage. All you have to do is quote the guy accurately and he snaps. Brian Schweitzer would keep his cool. He's very hard to rattle. When Mike Lange memorably went on an end-of-session, profanity-laced diatribe against Schweitzer, Schweitzer played it masterfully by not taking the bait and emphasizing Mike Lange in a bad moment was not the Mike Lange he knew. Game, set, match.

The ultimate question: do I think Schweitzer will be offered the job? No. Barely. Gut sense. Perfectly content with being wrong.

Do I think Schweitzer would take it if offered? Yes. I was beginning to go that way, and Tester's hesitating yes pushed me there last night.

(By the way, Jon Tester is just a tremendous human being. He is also the only Senator who, if I ran into him tomorrow, my first instinct would be to give him shit. He's that real of a guy. I'm honored I got to help him. Quick story: A few days before the election, I asked him if he could do anything what would he want to do right after it was over. I believed him when he said he'd want to put on a fake beard for about three days and just go drink at a bar. I love that guy. I digress.)

Still, if I'm Obama, I'd look at Schweitzer long and hard. I do think the Clintons are determined for it not to be Richardson (I have been hearing all the zipper rumors too, and if those have any truth you can be sure that the Clintons know what they are and will have no remorse about submarining Judas with that info, unlinked to them of course).

Like a lot of you, I'd been thinking about a female choice but it does make Obama look like he had to pick "a woman" and not "the most qualified" even if Obama deems Sebelius to be the most qualified. He'd be open to that annoying, nagging charge regardless of its truth. I hadn't thought of how Clinton would react to Obama picking a woman that wasn't her, but it makes a certain kind of sense that Clinton would find it unacceptable. If she has any future chances to be the nominee, it's important to her that she still is the first. (Again, I think there is absolutely no chance of her ever being president. That's just my opinion, now that half her own party feels about her close to the way they feel about Joe Lieberman and Republicans still galvanizingly hate her. But I realize that she may be oblivious to this and will react badly if Obama picks a woman VP for this reason.)

Brian Schweitzer is a noted early morning devourer of political blogs; let's hope he's found his way over here to 538 and posts something in the comments to steer me back on course where I've erred in the analysis (ha ha). I'd also love to hear Sirota's take on the whole idea, because he knows Schweitzer's world far better than I do.

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Grand Finale Night Liveblog II: Montana and Obama's Speech

10:45 PM. To the less generous commenters: I don't really feel badly at all about our projection in South Dakota. There were versions of the model that had Obama winning by 10 or 11 points, and there were versions that had Clinton winning by 7 or 8 points. In the end, I went with a sort of compromise between the two, and caveated in the write-up that Clinton could outperform those numbers if you use a version of the model that gives more weight to the trends inherent in the race, rather than assuming that the demographics are stable from state to state. (It's also probably the case that your margin of error is going to be higher with this sort of thing when you look at a state that has one congressional district as opposed to 20).

At the same time, South Dakotans behaved in a somewhat unusual way, in that Obama's favorability scores (on questions like whether voters would be satisfied with him as the nominee) were as high as they were in many states that Obama *won*. This was a state in which voters got a positive message from both candidates, and the late deciders broke to Clinton because she spent more time on the ground there. It may be instructive about what Clinton might have been able to do had she a more positive message throughout her campaign. There's a pretty good argument that the beginning of the end for Clinton was way back in November with "now the fun part starts".

10:32 PM. re: the comments. Nope, no bragging vis-a-vis ARG. It looks like the South Dakota margin is going to come in at 10 points (it might close a tiny bit as most of the unreported vote is from Indian reservations), which almost exactly bisects their Clinton +26 and my Obama +5. This is the whole argument, I guess, for combining polling with demographic sanity checks, which is what we do for our general election numbers.

It does look like we'll beat ARG in Montana, though.

10:18 PM. More from Sean:

"I fervently agree that the extended campaign has made Obama a much better candidate. On the night of New Hampshire, he turned a shocked and depressed staff around immediately. On his conference call, he explicitly told them the loss would be a blessing in disguise. And after contesting 56 contests, there is no doubt Obama's ready for McCain. He's salivating for McCain.

This is a candidate who has been through the gauntlet and shook up the world.

I'll have to put some thoughts together as far as Brian Schweitzer as VP. Jon Tester just threw that out there with obvious impery live on MSNBC."

10:01 PM. I don't know if this means anything, but to the extent I've been able to watch two channels at once, CNN's coverage has actually been much more critical of Clinton than MSNBC's.

9:49 PM. The Obama website has yet to update it to include Montana, but this little graphic deserves more credit that it's gotten for building a sense of momentum throughout the ultimately decisive month of February:



9:30 PM. The largest remaining scheduled moments in the campaign between now and November are the conventions and the debates. Is there any doubt that Obama is going to deliver a better convention night speech? Is there any doubt that, the first time he and McCain appear on a stage together, the contrast in age, height, and tone is liable to be pretty striking? McCain needs to figure out some way to wage a sort of guerrilla warfare campaign. If everything sticks to the script, Obama is going to win.

9:17 PM. Sean is somewhat less equivocal on Clinton's speech than I am:

"'We have won enough swing states to get to 270 electoral votes.'

I am very much looking forward to the end of the relentlessly cynicism. She knows most Americans won't know enough to immediately call out the deception underlying those kinds of effortlessly and endlessly repeated comments. The Clintons and their surrogates have peppered the land with outright contempt for the intelligence of Americans when it comes to building arguments. Yeah, there's a 1-to-1 map with winning a state in a primary and winning it in the general. Sure. The disdain for facts, the Lanny Davisication of political spin is something I am looking forward to putting behind us. After 8 loooong years, my tolerance for that kind of drearily self-serving cynicism is nonexistent.

As far as the content of Clinton's speech, while I am emotionally closed to her for her behavior this campaign cycle, that speech was not aimed at me. There were some very nicely worded turns of phrases that surely connected with many of her supporters, particularly that each vote was like a small prayer (though I think she stole that from Newman's closing in The Verdict). I understand that her supporters need to hear some of those things. Even chant Den-ver, Den-ver one last time for good old comfort. She isn't deciding anything tonight, it got decided on her. That was always the way out.

2012 is not an option. It's something to talk about for people who have to speculate, but I think if she really believed it were an option should Obama lose, she needed to speak to the people like me, to begin to try to open to her. And she made no attempt in that regard, nor did I expect her to."

9:11 PM. Back to South Dakota for a moment: the exits have Barack Obama having won the "other" vote (a.k.a. Native Americans) by about 12 points. Relatively little of that vote has been tallied yet, so the margin is probably going to tighten by a couple of points.

9:03 PM. The exits imply a 14-point win for Obama in Montana. The strongly divergent results in two relatively similar states are a good reminder of how much time spent on the ground can matter.

9:00 PM. Networks call Montana for Obama. Ultimately, it's pretty fitting that the candidates split the last two states.

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Grand Finale Night Liveblog

*** Newer material will be posted in Thread #2

8:54 PM. Obviously, this is a speech that can be read in a lot of different ways. I've had separate friends e-mail me to say that it was the best speech she's ever delivered, and the worst thing she's ever done. But -- I don't know -- I think it's possible to read too much into this and that in the heat of the moment. From a party unity perspective, it might even be healthy for Clinton (and by proxy her supporters) to press their case one last time.

8:39 PM. If anyone's wondering why we've been getting mixed messages out of the Clinton campaign, just look at the candidate herself.

8:35 PM. From Sean:

"How much fun do you think that was for Olbermann to break into McCain's painfully pat speech to announce Obama is the presumptive nominee? On a scale of 1 to 10... an 82?

I second Nate's thought about McCain coming off far better in one-on-one interviews, especially chummy ones. In interviews (Jon Stewart springs to mind), McCain actually comes off as likeable. These speeches are grueling and they don't hold the attention. He makes Bob Dole look downright riveting. For some reason, he's chosen "condescension" as his orientation toward Obama. Five months of condescension, once the public is actually playing attention? Smirkingly self-aware chuckles at his own "clever" turns of painfully canned phrases like "that's not change we can believe in!" Yeah, that's not gonna work. Ask Ms. Xerox.

It's really hard to think of a worse match for the country's furious mood at its government in a major change election year than condescendingly cynical smirkery at someone who is offering big change. Of course, Harold Ford. Jr. found McCain's speech "powerful and compelling." That's a direct quote. (On Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough loves Harold Ford, Jr. Loves him.)"

8:25 PM. CNN and MSNBC call South Dakota for Senator Clinton and ... nobody cares. American Research Group and Matt Drudge might have really done a favor to Obama tonight.

8:15 PM. I'm ripping this off from a commenter, but I was also struck by the extent to which every time McCain said "That's not change you can believe in!", I had a Pavlovian response of "That's change you can Xerox". We're going to notice little echoes like that throughout this campaign.

8:04 PM. The exit polls show only about a 2-point advantage for Clinton in South Dakota. (EDIT: This was wrong; the margin was ~8 points in the exits and I apparently forgot how to do math). On the very early returns that are coming in: I haven't really parsed the state on a county-by-county basis, but I'd guess that Obama's strongest areas will be in Sioux Falls (Minnehana County) and on the Indian Reservations. (Shannon County, which went more heavily for John Kerry than any other county in the country, looks to be the big one). We don't have data in from those areas yet.

8:01 PM. MSNBC and CNN call the nomination for Obama. We can finally say that it's over. His media people planned and staged this day masterfully and he's going to get some slobbering media narrative out of it.

7:41 PM. We'll be here until ... I don't know when. Two relatively worthless thoughts about McCain's speech before the narrative shifts back to the Democrats: (1) If Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan could keep people's attention with a stump speech for about 15 minutes, and Hillary Clinton for about 10 minutes, McCain's time frame is probably more like 5 minutes. I think he'll find that his strength is more in quick-hit, quick-reaction stuff rather than these sorts of set pieces. Fewer speeches, more interviews. (2) Clearly, McCain's primary campaign color appears to be a handsome shade of blue, but the green background got me to thinking: when was the last time a nominee from one of the two major parties used a color other than blue or red on their yard signs?

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Exit poll teasers (updated)

This is actually somewhat helpful:

About seven in 10 in both states called Obama honest and trustworthy. Nearly as many said that about Clinton in South Dakota but barely half in Montana called her honest and trustworthy.

The exit polls have been asking this question since Mississippi. Here's what those numbers looked like