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.

New Zogby Poll Shows Obama Within 1 Point

i don't trust these polls for a second but here it is:

The survey, which was conducted April 15-16, 2008 and came out of the field midway through Wednesday's contentious debate between the two candidates in Philadelphia, shows Clinton at 45% and Obama at 44%, with 12% either wanting someone else or left undecided.

The telephone survey, conducted using live operators working out of Zogby's on-site call center in Upstate New York, included 601 likely Democratic primary voters in Pennsylvania. It carries a margin of error of +/- 4.1 percentage points.

yesterday's public policy poll also puts the race at about even.

Obama Up in Polls: Pastor and Elitism are Sideshows

fingers crossed. change is in the air.
these are the kind of polls i like to see. it could be over after indiana and then we can get to the real work-- beating the pants off mccain.

cnn: Most surprisingly, the new LA Times/Bloomberg poll shows Obama ahead of Hillary Clinton by 5 points in Indiana (40 to 35 percent), a state with demographics that favor the New York senator and one where other recent polls have shown her with a lead.

The poll also shows Clinton only holds a 5 point lead in Pennsylvania (48 to 43 percent). That margin is among the slimmest measured between to the two candidates and is significantly less than the double digit lead Clinton held there two weeks ago.

latimes: The poll, conducted under the supervision of Times Poll Director Susan Pinkus, interviewed 623 voters in Pennsylvania, 687 in Indiana and 691 in North Carolina who expected to cast Democratic ballots. The margin of sampling error for the findings in each state is plus or minus 4 percentage points.

The telephone interviews took place Thursday through Monday, meaning the bulk were conducted just as controversy broke out over an Obama remark widely criticized as demeaning rural voters in Pennsylvania. He suggested that for some residents of small towns, their commitment to gun rights, religious faith and hostility toward foreign trade had its roots in their "bitterness" about economic hardships.

No poll question was asked specifically about the comment.

However, voters were asked about another controversy that has dogged the candidate in recent weeks: racially incendiary comments made by the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., the now-retired pastor of Obama's church in Chicago. The furor prodded Obama to deliver a major speech on racial relations in America last month.

In Pennsylvania, the flap seems to have marginally helped Obama more than hurt him: 24% said his handling of the issue made them think more highly of him; 15% said it made them think less highly of him; 58% said it made no difference in their views.

Many Democratic voters, however, see Obama's association with Wright as posing a problem for him in the general election -- 46% in Pennsylvania said they expected it to hamper him in a contest with presumptive Republican nominee John McCain; in Indiana, 47% agreed with that, and in North Carolina, 42%.

"I can't help but thinking the church is a big influence on him," said Roberta Rowe, a retiree in West Middlesex, Pa. "I'd like to feel completely comfortable, but that one issue there is really gnawing at me."

In the follow-up interviews, some voters complained that the criticism of his pastor and the allegations that Obama is elitist are sideshows.

"All this back-and-forth is not really staying on the issues that I want to hear from" the White House candidates, said Joseph Robinson, a disabled worker in Lafayette, Ind. He was unmoved by Clinton's charge that Obama, because of his small-town comment, had shown he was out of touch with many Americans