Morning Polls

This morning is the first point at which we're seeing tracking polls that are made up of totally post-VP debate interviews. And they do not show any substantial change in the nature of the race. I had speculated yesterday that we would see Obama's lead in the Gallup tracker decline a little bit today. It did not. Gallup moves from Obama +7 to Obama +8 and he remains at the important 50% threshold. Rasmussen moves from Obama +7 to Obama +8 and Obama has hit 52% in their tracker for the first time. Hotline moves from Obama +7 to Obama +6. R2000 holds steady at Obama +12. Democracy Corps has a poll out this morning showing Obama up by just 3 nationally. Zogby (for what this is worth) has a national poll out showing Obama up by 4 nationally.

A SurveyUSA poll in NH shows Obama up by 13. Say goodnight in NH. Along with Michigan, New Hampshire was probably McCain's best hope of picking off a state Kerry won in 2004. The next best hope? Pennsylvania. The Morning Call tracker in Pennsylvania shows Obama up by 11 this morning (up from 10 yesterday). So no real movement there. Suffolk has a poll out in Virginia that has Obama up by 12 (not a typo) there. More importantly, a SUSA poll in Virginia has Obama up by 10 (also, not a typo). The only slightly negative poll at the state level this morning is an Albuquerque Journal poll that shows Obama up by just 5 points. That is more narrow than it has been so we'll have to wait and see if others show movement towards McCain in NM.

Finally, Nate Silver has a piece out this morning taking a closer look at those Georgia registration and early voting numbers that show big increases in voter registration and early voting among African-Americans in particular. In short, he lays out the argument for why Georgia may well be a real target for Barack Obama and what the trends in Georgia mean for other southern states and what they mean for Senate races in the south (R2000 shows Chambliss in a dead heat against Democratic challenger Jim Martin and Elizabeth Dole is in big trouble in North Carolina). To add to what Silver says, R2000 has a Georgia poll out this morning that shows Obama down 7 and has African-Americans as 27% of voters there. As Silver points out, if African-American turnout is greater than that (say 29-31), Georgia quickly becomes a tossup.

McCain Dropping Out of Michigan Is ...

... "a complete crock of crap" and "a dumbass stunt" according to one of the County GOP Chairs in the state. I must be paraphrasing. No, check that, I'm not.

"A complete crock of crap." Why can't I wax poetic like that???

Morning Polls

This morning's tracking polls include two nights of post-VP debate interviews ... and things look stable. Gallup moves from Obama +8 to Obama +7 but indicates the race may narrow a bit in tomorrow's update. Rasmussen moves from Obama +6 to Obama +7. Hotline stays even at Obama +7. R2000 holds steady at Obama +12.

The good news is that preferences continue to solidify. In the Rasmussen tracker, 45% of voters say they are "certain" they will vote for Obama. Just 38% say they are "certain" they will vote for McCain. In other words, more people say they are "certain" to vote for Obama than ALL of those who are voting for McCain, leaning McCain, etc. This is VERY, VERY bad news for McCain.

There are also some state polls out this morning. The Morning Call Pennsylvania tracker moves from Obama +12 to Obama +10 but that's probably just noise. The Denver Post has Colorado tied. That is not a good result right now for Obama but we'll see if others have it the same way. Palin was just in Colorado yesterday. On the upside, a Columbus Dispatch poll has Obama up by 7 in Ohio. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune released their poll for the presidential race and they have Obama up by 18 in Minnesota. If you've been reading my posts for the last few days, you know I've been saying both this poll and the SUSA poll in MN seem screwy. And I pretty much stand by that. But I do think Obama is winning in Minnesota. I said yesterday that he probably leads by 5-8 points and I stand by that. Still waiting for others to poll the state.

Overall, the numbers do not seem to be moving very much right now ... and that's a good thing.

More Bad News for McCain

1) Sarah Palin is going to Nebraska tomorrow to try to defend the electoral vote up for grabs in the 2nd Congressional District there. That's an electoral vote that should be a gimmee for them and, if the base is so jazzed by Sarah Palin, they would much rather be using her in some important swing state tomorrow.

2) As Brian Schaffner points out, Obama has now hit some scary metrics. He's at 50% in the Gallup Tracking Poll and has an 8 point lead and it is now October. See Brian's piece for why this is going to be a steep hill to climb for McCain.

3) More polling data is showing that Sarah Barracuda (McCain proclaimed "viva la Barracuda" today ... seriously, he did) did not do anything to stem the tide towards Obama.

David Letterman ...

… really has it out for McCain and Palin. This is his piece with Brian Williams last night and Williams was trying as hard as he could to seem neutral but Dave just went after her all the way through.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puHITWjTc_Q

Morning Polls

Not much movement to detect in the first trackers out including a significant number of interviews since the VP debate but, if there is any movement, it seems to be towards Obama. Gallup moves from Obama +7 to Obama +8. Rasmussen moves from Obama +7 to Obama +6. Hotline moves from Obama +6 to Obama +7. And R2000 moves from Obama +11 to Obama +12. The Hotline tracker also made note of the fact that Joe Biden’s favorability rating went up significantly over the past week.

There are no significant state polls out today on the presidential race but there is a MN Senate poll from the Star-Tribune out that shows Al Franken up by 9. You may know that that SurveyUSA poll out yesterday (which showed McCain ahead in MN by 1) had Franken DOWN by 10. How could these two polls both be right? They can’t. I said yesterday that there was something wrong with that SUSA poll and I say it again today. I don’t know what the state of the Franken/Coleman race is to be honest but I know that Obama is ahead (and probably by 5-8) in Minnesota. And I think we’ll see that when polling is done there again soon. There, I said it.

Morning Polls

A little movement towards Obama in the trackers this morning. Gallup moves from Obama +5 to Obama +7. Rasmussen holds steady at Obama +7. Hotline moves from Obama +5 to Obama +6. R2000 moves from Obama +11 to Obama.

The big news comes from a little state. Two polls out this morning show Obama with a good lead in New Hampshire. Obama is up 10 according to Rasmussen and Obama is up 12 according to St. Anselm. There had not been a poll in New Hampshire in a couple of weeks and this will move NH into Obama’s column on a lot of maps that didn’t already have it that way.

A SurveyUSA poll in Minnesota has McCain up by 1. I just don’t believe it. CNN/Time had Obama up by 11 a few days ago and the national movement should have Obama up by a bit there right now. If you look at the internals of the SurveyUSA poll, you see some real wacky things going on. The poll has McCain up by 1 among women, it has Obama winning by 10 among voters 65 and over but only winning by 4 among voters 18-34. Finally, there is just no way Obama is up by 5 or 6 points nationally but behind by 1 in Minnesota. SurveyUSA is a solid pollster but this poll is just not right … and I suspect we’ll see another poll or two there in the coming days showing I’m right.

As for the debate, almost none of the interviews for these polls include reaction to the debate. We’ll see some of that in the coming days. But I think this flow-chart re-printed by Andrew Sullivan pretty well captures what we saw from Sarah Palin yesterday:

The Palin Debate Flow-Chart

Morning Polls

First, the bad news. As my friend Lonce pointed out to me this morning … Obama REALLY has his work cut out for him in Oklahoma where a poll yesterday showed him down by 30.

Everywhere else, he’s in great shape.

The trackers continue to look good. Rasmussen moves from Obama +6 to Obama +7. Gallup moves from Obama +4 to Obama +5. Hotline remained steady at Obama +5. R2000 moves from Obama +10 to Obama +11. Interestingly, I wrote about Nate Silver’s criticism of the GW/Battleground tracking poll and their odd weighting formula that had them showing McCain with a 2 point lead a few days ago. I don’t know why (perhaps in response to Silver’s critique) but they changed their weighting and … poof, their tracker this morning shows Obama +5. There is no disagreement. Obama has a nice lead now nationally. Many other national polls show similar kinds of numbers. The CBS News poll from last night has even more bad news for McCain. The poll has Obama up by 9 nationally and out of those who say they will vote for Obama, CBS asked if voters had made up their minds. 86% of Obama voters said they will not be changing their minds. That is a high number (higher than McCain’s voters for one) and suggests that Obama is not just leading but his support is more firm than McCain’s.

Obama’s lead is now being reflected in MANY state polls There is also a tracker in just the state of Pennsylvania. That tracker has shown an Obama lead all along but over the past week, that lead has tracked up to 9 points as of this morning. I mentioned yesterday a poll showing McCain’s lead in Georgia (a state he’s basically pulled out of) down to 8. This morning Insider Advantage has McCain’s lead in Georgia down to just 6. In North Carolina, Rasmussen now has Obama up by 3. Yow. In Michigan, a PPP poll has Obama up by 10. YOW! In New Mexico, SurveyUSA has Obama up by 8. Believe it or not, I think that might be underestimating his lead there.

Obama is running an ad this morning that was released a month ago but still works. Remarkable how consistent the message is from this guy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3F18zVblJ8

As I said yesterday, we can expect John McCain to come out swinging with some really, really nasty stuff sooner rather than later. So strap yourself in and keep working. Check that. Work harder!

McCain's Mood

McCain is pretty testy in this interview with the Des Moines Register Editorial Board. A more important question is: what the heck is McCain wasting his time for in Iowa … especially meeting with the Editorial Board of a newspaper that won’t endorse him anyway? Totally ridiculous:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHcPXfgD4jM

Morning Polls

Not much movement in the trackers this morning. Gallup went from Obama +6 to Obama +4. Rasmussen holds steady at Obama +6. Hotline moves from Obama +6 to Obama +5. R2000 holds steady at Obama +10. Democracy Corps has a national poll out that has Obama up by 4. Pew has a poll out that has Obama up by 6. Yesterday afternoon, ABC/WP came out with their poll putting Obama up by 4. Time has Obama up by 7 and a Bush Approval rating as low as 23%.

Franklin and Marshall has Obama up by 7 in PA this morning. I don’t see why so many sites have PA as a tossup state right now. It just isn’t. Then, there’s this …

The big polling story of the morning is the Quinnipiac polls in PA, OH, and FL. In short, it is hard to believe they are right so don’t get excited. Here they are:

Pennsylvania	Quinnipiac	Obama 54, McCain 39	Obama +15
Ohio	Quinnipiac	Obama 50, McCain 42	Obama +8
Florida	Quinnipiac	Obama 51, McCain 43	Obama +8

Nate Silver, for what it’s worth, argues Quinnipiac might be close to correct even if they have a 1-2 point Dem lean. Here’s his take this morning on them:

The McCain camp is going a little crazy over these polls. Usually, when a campaign does something like that, it's worried about morale. But do their complaints have any basis in fact?

Quinnipiac's polls have shown a slight Democratic lean this cycle -- they've been 1-2 points more favorable to Dems than contemporaneous polls of their states. From what I can tell, their head of polling (Peter Brown) has fairly conservative politics, so I don't know that it can be called a partisan lean. But that is the side that the polls have tended to end up upon nevertheless.

At the same time, they are highly-rated polls, use large sample sizes, and have plenty of rich trendlines for comparison. Is it possible that they are outliers to a certain degree? Possibly -- maybe even probably -- but as I intimated yesterday, with Obama's surge nationally it was inevitable that we were eventually going to get an oh sh*t set of state polling for Obama. There clearly seems to have been some movement toward Obama in Florida, as well as in Pennsylvania, where the Morning Call tracker has had him gaining a point literally every day since its inception. Ohio, I am somewhat less convinced about, but InsiderAdvantage also gives him the lead there (as well as a 6-point lead in Virginia).

I love it. In short, these are what he calls “an oh shit set of state polling.” It’s a technical term.