Campaign Diaries

The margins might be larger than what we have been seeing in other polls, but the trendline is one we have been observing for 10 days now: Quinnipiac’s latest release from battleground polls find some shocking numbers that suggest the race might be breaking wide open in Obama’s favor. Quinnipiac’s surveys are surely the best polling news Democrats have gotten in months, and they paint a brutal situation for the McCain campaign.

They were taken over the week-end, post-debate, though Quinnipiac also tested presidential match-ups in the period just prior to the debate in order to compare trends. That makes for six samples, all with relatively low margin of errors and large samples, and Obama leads well outside of the MoE in all 6.

• Obama leads 51% to 43% in Florida - that’s an 8% advantage, his biggest ever in the Sunshine State! He trailed by 5% last month. In the pre-debate sample, he led 49% to 43%.

• Obama leads 50% to 42% in Ohio. He led by 5% in August, by 7% just before the debate.

• Obama leads 54% to 39% in Pennsylvania (!). He led by 7% in August. Just prior to the debate, Obama led by 6% only.

• While the margins are big, the internals are consistent with what we are seeing elsewhere: In every state, respondents say that Obama won the debate by double-digits - including independents (by margins ranging from 15% to 27%). Other troubling signs for McCain: voters are not responding well to Sarah Palin nor to McCain’s efforts to fix the financial crisis, which they say has done more harm than good.

• Obama leads 49% to 42% in another Pennsylvania poll, this one released by Franklin & Marshall. Smaller than the Q-pac advantage, but still a robust advantage.

On the other hand, the Washington Post/ABC national poll finds a much tighter contest than it did last week, when its survey finding Obama leading by 9% generated a lot of buzz. This time, Obama leads by 4% only in both likely voters and registered voters. What is surprising about this is that a 9% lead this week would have been far less surprising, since most tracking polls now show a mid-to-high single digits lead for the Illinois Senator.

That said, the Washington Post’s margin is outside of the MoE, and the internals of the polls continue to favor Obama, including the question of who won the debate - something the three Quinnipiac polls agree on. And this points to two simple conclusions:

1. Obama has a robust lead right now, though the exact magnitude of his advantage depends on statistical variation, polling methodology.
2. That the lead is relatively recent and linked to current events suggests that it is likely to remain volatile and that the race could easily tighten, though Obama is no certainly in a better position. As I explained on Sunday, McCain is forced to waste so much time playing catch-up that he would have trouble then also taking the lead.