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.
Friday, June 20, 2008
Today's Polls, 6/20
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Afternoon Polling Update, 6/18
So many polls, so little time! This is everything that's been released today, including the results from our morning edition.
Let's begin in Ohio, where Rasmussen's latest data contradicts the notion that Barack Obama is surging in the state. He still trails John McCain by one point in their polling; McCain had also led by one point in their May survey. There are several factors to consider here. Firstly, this poll postdates the Quinnipiac poll by a few days. I'm not yet convinced that Obama's bounce is receding, in part because there haven't really been any intervening news events to give some momentum back to John McCain, but that's always something to keep in mind. Secondly, some of the pollsters (like SurveyUSA and PPP) that had shown Obama leading in Ohio by fairly large margins tend to have a more fluid/less grounded conception of party identification than does Rasmussen. In Ohio, they're finding a huge shift in party identification, with as much as 50 percent of the state identifying as Democrat, and running with those numbers as is. Since SurveyUSA and PPP identify a lot more Democrats in their sample, and since much of Obama's bounce appears to be in the form of bringing Democrats back home to their party, it is not surprising if they are showing more movement toward him.
Unfortunately, there are no definitive answers about how one should measure party idenitifaction, and we won't really know who got it right until November. At a gut-feel level, it's hard not to imagine Ohio being somewhat close. At the same time, Obama's problems in the state had stemmed from his poor performance in Southern Ohio, which is part of Appalachia. And this is the region in which his bounce appears to be most profound: his polling has improved by 12 points in Kentucky and 15 in Arkansas, and he took some huge steps forward in Southern Ohio in Quinnipiac's regional breakdown.
Other Rasmussen polling does show a bounce for Obama. In Maine, he's ahead by 22 (up from 13 a month ago), and in Alaska, he trails McCain by just 4 points (down from 9 a month ago). There is certainly some novelty value in the notion of a Democrat competing in Alaska. But it's a state that the Obama campaign ought to be taking reasonably seriously: Alaska is the the youngest state in the country in a year where we have the largest-ever age gap between the two nominees. Indeed, it's probably time for Obama to visit Alaska. I don't have any numbers on this, but I would guess that candidate visits make more difference in smaller states, and particularly those that are out of the way geographically. If Obama visits Alaska, it will create a ton of earned media, and McCain will probably have to follow him to defend the state.
The notorious A.R.G. (American Research Group) is out with their first general election polling of the year; they have Obama leading by 5 points in Florida, and 12 in New Hampshire. You probably know that I don't have the highest opinion of ARG, but in their defense, their general election polling has tended to be pretty decent -- it's their primary polling that has been a mess. I do not, incidentally, find the New Hampshire result implausible, precisely because New Hampshire has some history of overreacting to current trends. With few New Hampshirites fitting into hard-and-fast demographic categories, and many of them identifying as independents, there is probably a higher fraction of swing voters there than any other state in the country. So as the country swings, New Hampshire swings twice over.
Finally, two results that tend to confirm our current impressions in a couple of states. In Virginia, Public Policy Polling has Obama ahead by 2 -- this is their first poll of the Commonwealth -- and in Wisconsin, SurveyUSA has Obama ahead by 9, up from 6 last month.
Friday, May 23, 2008
Today's Polls, 5/23
Another busy polling day, and one of Barack Obama's stronger ones in some while.
The headline is probably in Ohio, where SurveyUSA shows Obama with a 9 point lead over John McCain. Hillary Clinton was not surveyed in this matchup. It's interesting to wonder, as Markos Moulistas has speculated, whether Obama polls stronger when Clinton's name is not mentioned in the same survey. There would be a fairly easy way to test this: if a pollster rotates the question order of Clinton and Obama (as they probably should be doing), we could see whether one Democrat tends to benefit from going first. We may explore this topic further in the upcoming days.
In Pennsylvania, Rasmussen has Obama +2, Clinton +11. This is another of those good news, bad news results for Obama: it's stronger than his last Rasmussen poll in the Keystone (which showed him trailing by a point), but somewhat weaker than his other results in the state. For Clinton, of course, this is unambiguously a good result, and Pennsylvania now looks so strong for her -- we have her at 86 percent to win the state -- that she might be able to get away with a limited investment of resources there in November.
We actually have two new New Hampshire polls. Rasmussen has Obama ahead by 5, and Clinton ahead by 10. But there is also a Dartmouth poll showing McCain leading both candidates: he was 2.5 points ahead of Obama and 8.8 points ahead of Clinton (they list the decimal point, so I do too). Of the two polls, Rasmussen is the one to take more seriously, simply because the Dartmouth poll had a small sample size and was in the field as much as three weeks ago. Nevertheless, this underscores one of my theories about New Hampshire: it has a very engaged electorate, and it tends to serve as a weathervane for currents of momentum.
Finally, a Research 2000 poll for Daily Kos shows McCain leading Obama by 15 points and Clinton by 19 in Mississippi. Mississippi has occasionally been discussed as a reach state for Obama. I don't buy that, as even with extremely heavy black turnout, the demographics just aren't favorable enough for him to get the state closer than about 8 points. Nevertheless, the Senate race in Mississippi looks to be competitive (Roger Wicker, who inherited the seat from Trent Lott, had a 46-42 lead in the R2K poll), so there may be incentives for the Democrats to invest some time there.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
The Early Bird still got the Worm
If you're Indiana or West Virginia, you're probably feeling pretty good right now. Your usually-irrelevant primary just got a week's worth of national attention, and you had Democrats criss-crossing you from border to border. But guess what? You'd still rather be Iowa.
Below is a listing of the number of events that were scheduled in each state by one of the two leading Democratic candidates, as according to the Washington Post candidate tracker. A caution: there is no such thing as an official register of events, and one of the campaigns (Hillary Clinton's) tends to be much more aggressive than the other about publishing their schedule, including events run by the EX-POTUS or the DOTEXPOTUS. Nevertheless, this will have to suffice.
The number of events is divided by the number of delegates that were at stake in that contest. There were, for example, 2.52 events for every delegate in Nevada, but just 0.12 for every one in New Mexico.
It would probably be more useful to sort these in the order that the primaries took place:
Iowa and New Hampshire absolutely blow everything else way, with more than 7 candidate visits per delegate -- and that's not even counting all the mileage accumulated in those states by candidates who since dropped from the race. And the next two states on the docket, Nevada and South Carolina, were well ahead of anything that came afterward, although Indiana came somewhat close. The Super Tuesday states, on the other hand, collectively screwed themselves over.
If we were doing this more scientifically, we might need to account for some kind of diminishing returns. Barack Obama's 12th visit to Bettendorf, Iowa probably wasn't going to make as much difference as his first. Nevertheless, there is a huge benefit to going early, which is why Michigan and Florida gambled (and lost). On a per-delegate basis, there was about 11 times as much candidate attention paid to Nevada as to California.
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Today's Polls, 5/3
In New Hampshire, the highly reputable University of New Hampshire poll has weighed in with good news for John McCain: he leads Barack Obama by 6 points and Hillary Clinton by 3.
This poll does not really affect the electoral math much, since Thursday's Rasmussen poll already significantly lowered expectations for Obama in the Granite State. Nevertheless, it's worth thinking about what is happening in New Hampshire, since just days ago we were talking about New Hampshire as being among that "Group of Nine" states in which Obama performed well but Clinton didn't. And the answer, as it always is in New Hampshire, is independent voters, which make up the plurality (and by some inklings, perhaps even the majority) of its electorate. Obama trailed McCain 61/27 among New Hampshire independents in this survey (Clinton trailed him 53/30), and he's got no chance to win the state unless he can improve upon those numbers.
Still, as we witnessed during the Democratic primary, New Hampshire voters can be notoriously fickle. I suspect that it is precisely because it is a very politically aware state. Call it a hunch, but I would guess that the per capita consumption of Hardball and Meet the Press is higher in New Hampshire than it is just about anywhere else. And if that's the case, Obama's difficult media cycles early this past week, when the UNH and Rasmussen polls were in the field, might have been magnified here.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Today's Polls, 5/1
I'm running behind today and so the analysis will have to wait until later, but Quinnipiac has polling out in three major swing states, which shows very favorable results for Hillary Clinton. She leads John McCain by 14 points in Pennsylvania, 10 points in Ohio, and 8 points in Florida. Obama, meanwhile, leads McCain by 9 in Pennsylvania, but trails McCain by 1 point in the other two states. The very brief takeaway is that these polls are actually good news for both Democrats -- for Clinton more so than for Obama, obviously -- but Obama is at his highest win percentage in weeks, while Clinton's is at her highest since our tracking began.
And in New Hampshire, Rasmussen shows Clinton trailing McCain by 3 points and Obama trailing him by 10. These represent a big drop for Obama from Rasmussen's previous polling of New Hampshire, and McCain is now the solid favorite in the state against both Democrats.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
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 | Obama | Clinton |
| CO | Rasmussen | 3/17/08 | Tie | McCain +14 |
| KY | Survey USA | 3/15/08 | McCain +36 | McCain +10 |
| MO | Survey USA | 3/15/08 | McCain +14 | McCain +2 |
| NH | Rasmussen | 3/16/08 | McCain +3 | McCain +6 |
| OH | Survey USA |
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