Obama Up in Florida and Ohio

Election polls for the most part are silly right now. They're out for fun and to influence. I'm convinced these pollsters have agendas, too.

State polls are somewhat more telling than national polls. 

The polls will begin to reflect what's really happening after the convention but when Obama's ahead in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida, three states he's not supposed to win, according to the critics, then I'm going to post it.

The recent Quinniapac poll has Obama up by 2 in those states.

A Rasmussen poll put McCain up by 10 in Ohio about a week ago and a recent Strategic Vision poll had McCain up by 8 a week ago in Florida.

Obama has been polling about 7 points ahead of McCain in Pennsylvania for a while.

Obama Leading McCain by 102 Electoral Votes

The Swamp: We're inside four months from the Nov. 4 presidential election, and state-by-state polling suggests a big lead for Sen. Barack Obama over Sen. John McCain.

State polling numbers compiled by electoral-vote.com show the Democrat from Illinois winning 26 states for a total of 320 electoral votes. That's a 102-electoral-vote margin over the Arizona Republican. It includes seven states Democrat John Kerry lost to President Bush in 2004: Iowa, Indiana, Ohio, Virginia, Colorado, Montana and New Mexico.

BUT...

Speaking of Kerry, here's a huge caveat for Obama fans: The Web site's numbers on this date four years ago predicted a Kerry win in the electoral college.

Here's another: Obama's lead in several states, including Ohio and Pennsylvania, is narrow. A shift of a few percentage points across the Rust Belt would tip 52 electoral votes to McCain and give him the 270 he needs for the White House.

The map should increasingly turn in favor of Obama in the coming months. McCain hasn't been able to come up with a vision or an overarching plan for the country, sort of like Bush's running of the Iraq war, so it's doubtful that any staff shakeup or the Karl Rove personal attack strategy will get him anywhere. In these troubled economic times, you have to have a vision and no campaign strategy can make up for the lack of a plan.

Obama's Big Lead in New State Polls

Obama leads double digits in Wisconsin and Minnesota; Michigan by 6 and Colorado by 5.

Wallop would be the appropriate word in Minnesota. Republicans think they have a chance in Minnesota and are holding their convention there. They think that Minnesotans like Gov. Tim Pawlenty.  

It should be noted that polls can be misleading and that polls are virtually meaningless at this point, except for one aspect -- they influence and give the idea that Obama is ahead, a psychological advantage.

WSJ:
Women, younger voters and minorities, who typically trend Democratic, favor Sen. Obama in all four states. But the Illinois senator's support also seems solid among independents and among some groups that Republicans have been able to count on the in past.

Sen. Obama leads Sen. McCain among all age groups, including voters over 55. He trails among whites in Colorado and Michigan, but leads Sen. McCain handily among whites in Minnesota and Wisconsin. No Democrat since Lyndon Johnson in 1964 has carried a majority of the white voters nationally, which suggests that "if he can stay this close, he's going to become president," said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the poll.

Obama's Double Digit Lead in New Poll

This is good news but we can't let it go to our heads. We've seen how misleading polls can be and how simply wrong they can be. But Obama is leading McCain by 12 points.

LA Times: In a two-man race between the major party candidates, registered voters chose Obama over McCain by 49% to 37% in the national poll conducted last weekend.

On a four-man ballot including independent candidate Ralph Nader and Libertarian Bob Barr, voters chose Obama over McCain by an even larger margin, 48% to 33%.

Obama's advantage, bigger in this poll than in most other national surveys, appears to stem in large part from his positions on domestic issues. Both Democrats and independent voters say Obama would do a better job than McCain at handling the nation's economic problems, the public's top concern.

In contrast, many voters give McCain credit as the more experienced candidate and the one best equipped to protect the nation against terrorism -- but they rank those concerns below their worries about the economy.

Moreover, McCain suffers from a pronounced "enthusiasm gap," especially among the conservatives who usually give Republican candidates a reliable base of support. Among voters who describe themselves as conservative, only 58% say they will vote for McCain; 15% say they will vote for Obama, 14% say they will vote for someone else, and 13% say they are undecided.

By contrast, 79% of voters who describe themselves as liberal say they plan to vote for Obama.

Even among voters who say they do plan to vote for McCain, more than half say they are "not enthusiastic" about their chosen candidate; only 45% say they are enthusiastic. By contrast, 81% of Obama voters say they are enthusiastic, and almost half call themselves "very enthusiastic," a level of zeal that only 13% of McCain's supporters display.

"McCain is not capturing the full extent of the conservative base the way President Bush did in 2000 and 2004," said Susan Pinkus, director of the Times Poll. "Among conservatives, evangelicals and voters who identify themselves as part of the religious right, he is polling less than 60%.

"Meanwhile, Obama is doing well among a broad range of voters," she said. "He's running ahead among women, black voters and other minorities. He's running roughly even among white voters and independents."

Obama Leads McCain In Swing States

I guess all that huffing and puffing by Hillary's angry supporters that Obama needs Hillary to win just aint so. Obama is leading in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

I have noticed, however, that the general election has been more civil than the primaries. Hillary's camp launched personal attacks, spread the gossipy emails, planting seeds in people's minds but McCain has restrained himself, even saying wife insults are off limits.

Of course, that hasn't stopped the GOP from launching playground attacks, but it seems to be backfiring on them. Or maybe no one is really paying attention to the republicans because they haven't much to say, or maybe they just haven't let loose yet, or maybe....

CNN: Obama lost the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania by 9 points — but a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday shows him leading McCain by 12 points, 52-40. In Ohio — a state Obama lost to Hillary Clinton by 10 points in March — he’s leading McCain 48-42. And in Florida, where he did not campaign this primary season and lost an unsanctioned Democratic contest, he leads McCain 47-43.

The Ohio and Florida results are reversals from Quinnipiac polls published a month ago, when Clinton was still in the race, and McCain led Obama in hypothetical match-ups.

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