from surveyUSA:
A new poll from SurveyUSA found that if the presidential election were held now, Barack Obama would best John McCain in North Dakota. The sampling of 574 likely voters in the state said 46 percent would go for Obama, 42 percent for McCain. In the same poll, Sen. Hillary Clinton would lose to McCain, 54 percent to 35 percent among North Dakotans.
Of course, a single poll is nothing more than a snapshot in time. It’s not a definitive measure of voter preference unless it’s supplemented by a series of polls and other analyses that identify trends and settled voter sentiment. Nonetheless, even the suggestion that a Democrat – any Democrat – can win the presidential vote in historically red-state North Dakota in 2008 is an eyebrow-raiser.
North Dakota has rarely been blue on the election map. Since statehood, North Dakotans have favored the Democratic presidential candidate only five times: Woodrow Wilson in 1912 and 1916, Franklin Roosevelt in 1932 and 1936; Lyndon Johnson in 1964. Some historians argue that those departures from the state’s reliable Republican tilt were due to unique circumstances: Wilson’s pledge (violated) to keep the United States out of World War I; Roosevelt’s New Deal promises to raise the nation out of the Great Depression; Johnson, carrying on the agenda of assassinated John Kennedy and lucky enough to run against deeply unpopular Barry Goldwater.
The North Dakota SurveyUSA poll (done in late February) is broken down by age and gender. Obama easily won the 18-34 group (57 percent to 33 percent for McCain, 9 percent undecided), lost by a little the 35-54 group (41 percent to
47 percent, 12 percent undecided) and won elderly voters (44 percent to McCain’s 42 percent, 14 percent undecided).
By gender, Obama was within the poll’s margin of sampling error with
45 percent of male voters to 44 percent for McCain. Female voters broke
48 percent for Obama, 39 percentmap of who won what (it illustrates on who really is ahead)
obama leads in north carolina pollsClinton still leads in pennsylvania but the gap has narrowed.