Today's Polls, 7/17

A trio of polls from Rasmussen Reports contain relatively good news for Barack Obama.

In Nevada, Obama leads by 2 points after having trailed McCain in each of Rasmussen's last three polls of the state. We tend to group Nevada together with Colorado and New Mexico; but really the states do not have that much in common. Colorado is young, wealthy, and well-educated --increasingly hard to distinguish from reliably blue states like Minnesota or Washington. New Mexico, by contrast, has considerably below-average incomes, and is one of just three majority-minority states on the US mainland.

And Nevada presents a whole different set of circumstances, full of unionized workers and libertarians and Mormons and professional gamblers; and a whole host of local issues ranging from Yucca Mountain to one of the nation's highest foreclosure rates. Point being, it's a difficult state to figure out to begin with, and especially so given its paucity of polling. But between this poll and the Democrats' major gains in voter registration, I think we have to give a slight edge to Obama in Nevada, even though my model is still wont to give a slight edge to McCain.

In North Carolina, John McCain leads Barack Obama by 3 points, which is about the same lead he's held in nearly every poll of the state since April. While the state should remain reasonably close, our model does not particularly like North Carolina as an investment target for Obama, figuring that Obama won't win it without having won Virginia, and that if he's won Virginia, he won't need it.

Lastly, in Arkansas, McCain is 13 points ahead. Obama had trailed 9 points in the June edition of this poll, but by margins a large as 29 points earlier in the spring. Arkansas can't be completely dismissed as an electoral target, simply because if the Clintons commit themselves to some vigorous and sincere barnstorming on Barack Obama's behalf, they'll bring some voters in along with them. But 13 points worth? Probably not without a Clinton on the ticket.

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Today's Polls, 6/20

A new Rasmussen poll in the state of Nevada has John McCain leading Barack Obama by 3 points. This is a slight improvement for Obama from Rasmussen's previous poll, which had shown McCain ahead by 6. Nevertheless, Nevada remains one of those states where our regression model thinks that Obama's numbers have significant room to improve. Obama has outfundraised McCain by better than 4:1 in the Silver State, and Nevada has a highly secular population, a group that has performed well for Obama in other states.

So what gives? Nevada has historically been an apathetic state politically. It's turnout rate in the 2004 election was among the lowest in the country by any and all measures. And not that the following metric is the end-all, be-all, but when I rank the states from 1 to 50 in terms of the amount of per-capita traffic they contribute to FiveThirtyEight.com, Nevada ranks just 36th (the top three states, FWIW, are Massachusetts, Washington and Oregon; the bottom three are Mississippi, West Virginia, and Oklahoma). If Obama wants to win Nevada, he is probably going to have to rattle the cage a little harder than he might in another state.

In New Hampshire, which is anything but apathetic politically, Rasmussen has Barack Obama increasing his lead to 11 points; last month he led John McCain there by 5. Remember my rule of thumb about New Hampshire: its numbers tends to move about twice as much as the national average. So if Obama is leading by 11 points in New Hampshire, that would imply a 5.5 point lead nationally, which is just about where we have him.

Also two new polls out from SurveyUSA. In California, Barack Obama leads John McCain by 12 points, up from 7 points in their tracking last month. In Iowa, however, he leads by 4 -- down from 9 last month. I would be a little bit cautious about reading too much into either of the Iowa polls released within the past week as Iowans presently have bigger things to worry about.

Finally, while we don't usually focus on national polls, that's where a lot of the action has been today, with no fewer than seven of them released within the past 24 hours.

Newsweek's poll is the attention-getter, showing Barack Obama leading John McCain by 15 points. Is Barack Obama actually ahead by 15 points? Of course not. Newsweek's data tends to be fairly volatile, and we have a whole bunch of polling on both the state and national level that implies that Obama's real margin is closer to 5 points. Nevertheless, he has broken through a barrier of sorts. The last instance I can identify when a Democrat held a 15-point lead over a Republican nominee in any individual November trial heat poll is from November, 1996, when CBS News gave Bill Clinton an 18-point lead over Bob Dole on the eve of the election.

Other national polling, CNBC-style: Gallup Tracker: Obama +2; Rasmussen: Obama +4; USA Today/Gallup: Obama +6; FOX: Obama +4; Ipsos: Obama +7; and Harris Interactive, Obama +11.

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Weekend Poll Catchup

When my friend Geoff and I went to debate camp together (yes, there is something even dorkier than writing about polls), Geoff had a screensaver with an obnoxious lime green background and that pronounced in some very tacky, Windows 3.0 kind of font: "SLEEP IS THE ENEMY". I don't quite feel that way myself, but lately I've begun understand where Geoff was coming from. We were so busy rolling out methodological changes over the weekend that we didn't bother to document the latest polls. So let's see what we've got on the polling front.

In Arkansas, Rasmussen has Barack Obama closing to within 9 points. While this is hardly a fantastic result for a Democrat in Arkansas, it does represent an enormous improvement from Obama's prior polling in the state, which had shown him down by as many as 29 points. This result is easier to understand in light of our analysis of Obama's bounce, which seems to be concentrated in states with strong Democratic party identification but relatively few African-Americans -- Clinton country, in other words. Can Obama actually close Arkansas to the point where it becomes competitive? If Hillary Clinton is his VP choice -- Clinton still gets much more of a home-state effect in Arkansas than her adopted home of New York -- the state is probably in play. Otherwise, it probably isn't, although if the Clintons are particularly vigorous in their campaigning, it might get teasingly close.

In Oregon, Rasmussen has Obama ahead by 8. This poll has been cited by some McCain supporters a a sign that Obama's bounce is waning, since Rasmussen's last poll had him up 14 there. However, that May poll had been taken right as Obama had begun to campaign toward that state's primary; Rasmussen's March poll had shown him up by 6. No matter how you interpret the trend, Oregon looks pretty safe for Obama, but given Clinton's paucity of support in the state, there was perhaps less room for Obama to gain further ground there.

The New York Times has decided to poll the Empire State, which shows Obama leading John McCain 51-32. Although this is the Times' first poll in New York this year, Obama's 19-point margin as large as in any New York poll conducted this year. So once again, the same pattern: big Clinton state, bigger bounce.

Finally, in Nevada, a Mason-Dixon poll shows John McCain ahead by 2 points, 44-42. Mason-Dixon had last polled Nevada way back in December, at which point McCain led by 6. Although you have to go back to March to find a survey where Obama led in Nevada (the state is notoriously hard to poll and hasn't been polled much), the state's demographics should be relatively friendly to him, and he should theoretically be on the right side of the Yucca Mountain issue. With that said, in most of the scenarios* where Obama wins by way of the Southwestern swing states, he only needs two out of three to win, so Colorado and New Mexico may remain his first targets.

* For example, Kerry states + Iowa + Colorado + New Mexico is a winning combination; if he wins those states but loses New Hampshire, the election ends in a 269-269 tie that would probably be resolved in Obama's favor in the House.

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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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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.

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Today's Polls, 4/23

In neh-VAAD-uh, Rasmussen has John McCain leading Barack Obama by 5 points, and Hillary Clinton by 11. Bad news for both Democrats, but we'll save the lengthy analysis for a post on the state of the Democratic nomination race that should go up shortly.

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Tonight's Polls, 3/24

Tonight's polls are courtesy of Rasmussen, which has cycled through to Nevada and North Carolina. McCain leads both Democrats in North Carolina: Obama by 9 points and Hillary by 16. And both Democrats lead McCain in Nevada: Obama is winning by 4, and Hillary by 1.

This is a fairly neutral batch of news for everyone involved. The 1-point lead that Clinton holds over McCain in Nevada is her best result in any public poll of that state; but, her 16-point deficit in North Carolina is her worst result of any poll in that state. For Obama, both polls are fairly close to his established averages.

It's interesting to ponder whether either Democrat would decide to devote resources to North Carolina in the general election cycle. North Carolina has dropped entirely off of Clinton's swing state list, and fallen to the bottom of Obama's. On the other hand, both Democrats will be building a ground game in North Carolina in preparation for the May primary (arguably the most important primary remaining in terms of media narrative -- including Pennsylvania).

North Carolina is going to be surveyed frequently, as both Civitas and PPP put out polls on a monthly basis. I'd say that Obama (or Clinton) needs to poll within the margin of error in at least one or two of those polls between now and May for North Carolina to qualify as a bona fide swing state.

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