VIRGINIA new poll.
Interesting day of polling...
Pretty interesting day of polls...
-- In Virginia, SurveyUSA suddenly has Obama up by his biggest margin since May, 50% to 46%. Compare this to last week's SurveyUSA poll of Virginia, done right after the Republican convention, where McCain was up 2%. According to the poll's internals, after seeing men and independents shift big to him last week, this week McCain has lost that support and then some. Perhaps most interesting is that this poll has a number of Republicans now shifting to Obama. Last week 11% of Republicans said they planned to vote for Obama, this week, 17%. There is no way of knowing if that is just a sampling error or something worth paying attention to. This poll does seem to indicate, though, that the peak of McCain's convention bounce is behind us now, at least in Virginia. There also seems to be no Palin impact in Virginia, as McCain actually lost 1% support among women compared to the last two Virginia polls. One other thing to note here is that this poll has just 19% of the voters being African American. In 2004, blacks made up 21% of the vote. It's very hard to see how black turnout doesn't increase this year. If you change black turnout from 19% to, say 23%, a 2% increase from 2004, Obama's lead grows to 6%. Obviously both candidates have a lot riding on Virginia. It's hard to see Obama losing the election if he wins Virginia.
-- In Ohio, Suffolk has McCain up over Obama, 46% to 42%. In polls, Ohio continues to lean slightly to McCain. My hunch is that the state is going to be tougher for Obama to win that polling indicates. Obama underperformed in Ohio during the primaries for reasons I won't get into.
-- In Iowa, Des Moines Register has Obama up 52% to 40% over McCain. As some of you may know, the Des Moines Register poll is by far the most reliable poll of Iowa. They are the guys who nailed the Iowa caucus back in December. We have now seen Obama open up his two biggest leads ever in Iowa in the two polls done after the Palin pick, indicating that she seems to have had a negative effect on McCain's chances in the state, not that he had that great a chance in Iowa anyway. At this point, Iowa is looking pretty safe for Obama and is not looking at all like a swing state.
-- Good news for McCain in Minnesota as SurveyUSA has Obama up by just 2% and the Star Tribune has the race tied. Just like we are seeing with Obama in Colorado, McCain seems to be getting a larger than normal bounce in Minnesota because that is where the Republican convention took place (meaning he got a ton of local coverage in the state). The chances of McCain actually winning Minnesota though remain slim. The state has very favorable demographics to Obama and if McCain can't pull a lead there now, right after holding a convention in the state, he probably won't be able to flip it. But still, polls like these may force Obama to invest more resources in the state than he wants to.
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