Good News:McCain Makes Significant Gains in Key Battleground States
Majority of Voters in Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin Favor Keeping Troops in Iraq, According to Quinnipiac-washingtonpost.com-Wall Street Journal Survey
Republican John McCain says his Democratic rival Barack Obama is wrong on Iraq. McCain says U.S. troops will withdraw from Iraq with honor and victory.
By Chris Cillizza
washingtonpost.com staff writer
July 24, 2008
Republican John McCain has quickly closed the gap between himself and Democratic rival Sen. Barack Obama in several key battleground states even as the Arizona senator struggles to break through the wall-to-wall coverage of Obama's trip to Europe and the Middle East this week.
McCain and Obama are in a statistical dead heat in Colorado, Michigan and Minnesota according to polling conducted by Quinnipiac University for washingtonpost.com and the Wall Street Journal during the past week.
The surveys are part of a four-month long effort to measure voter sentiment in key battleground states that could determine the outcome of the race. The path to the presidency runs through a handful of battleground states, as both Obama and McCain seek the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House. Thus, the four states surveyed in this project provide a snapshot of where things stand less than four months before Election Day.
The first in the series of polls, conducted in the four states in mid-June, showed Obama comfortably ahead of McCain in Wisconsin and Minnesota while the races in Michigan and Colorado were closer. The latest polling, showing a much tighter race, was conducted July 14 to 22, during Obama's high-profile trip to the Middle East.
While both campaigns are heavily engaged on television in most of these states, it's not immediately clear from the data what accounted for McCain's rapid rise -- particularly in Minnesota and Colorado.
One possible reason is the campaign's focus over the last month on the war in Iraq and national security concerns more broadly. McCain's campaign has hammered home the idea that Obama was mistaken in his opposition to the surge of U.S. troops last year and is wrong now about his proposed 16-month timetable for withdrawing troops.
Voters in all four states seem to agree. Asked whether they would prefer a "fixed date" for withdrawal or to "keep troops in Iraq until the situation is more stable," majorities in all four states preferred the latter option.
Those results suggest that while Obama's initial opposition to the war plays well with voters, his plan to remove troops from the country within 16 months of taking office as president is less well received.
Independents generally were far more evenly divided between Obama and McCain than in last month's Quinnipiac/washingtonpost.com/Wall Street Journal surveys.
A month ago, Obama led McCain among Independents by anywhere from 21 points (Minnesota) to eight points (Michigan). In the most recent set of data, McCain actually outperforms Obama by three points among independents in Michigan while losing that crucial voting bloc far more narrowly in Colorado, Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Two of the states in the battleground surveys -- Minnesota and Colorado -- are also playing host to high profile Senate races. In each, the news is good for Republicans.
In Minnesota, Sen. Norm Coleman has built a 53 percent to 38 percent edge over entertainer Al Franken ¿ thanks in no small part to a series of gaffes by the former "Saturday Night Live" star. In Colorado, former Rep. Bob Schaffer (R) has pulled into a dead heat with Rep. Mark Udall (D), an affirmation of Republicans' insistence that the contest will be among the closest in the country. |
