It seems somewhat sacrilegious to return to polls after the excitement of the past 24 hours, but here is a roundup of the last two days of polling news. Before going on to state polls, let’s take a look to the state of the tracking polls, as today’s delivery of Rasmussen and Gallup will be the last taken entirely before Biden’s pick and the two week extravaganza that will be the conventions. Obama’s 2% lead in both Rasmussen and Gallup will be used as a marker for whatever bounce they receive - especially because both trackings have been hovering around those numbers for weeks now, with incredible stability.
Meanwhile, in state numbers:
- In Indiana, the first Rasmussen poll finds McCain leading but by a narrow margin, 46% to 42% (49% to 43% with leaners). That’s the same margin as the recent SUSA poll. McCain’s favorability rating is much stronger - 65% to 52%.
- In California, Obama is ahead in the Rasmussen poll, 51% to 37%, 54% to 41% with leaners.
- In Tennessee, McCain leads 56% to 32% in a Rasmussen poll, a 9% improvement since June. Obama’s favorability rating is disastrous: 39%, with 60% unfavorable!
- In Mississippi, the numbers are stable since July, with McCain leading 54% to 41% (56% to 43% with leaners). Take a look at this racial polarization: Obama only gets 13% of the white vote, 97% of the black vote! The racial gap is a stunning 166%…
The two interesting states of the list, of course, are Indiana and Mississippi. The former is one of the red states that the Obama campaign has been advertising in, and over the past 3 months we had only gotten two SUSA polls from it. One (in June) showed Obama leading by 1%; the other, released this week, had McCain leading by 6%. That SUSA now confirms that this race is in the mid single-digits means that we have enough confirmation to start taking the possibility of Indiana having become a truly competitive state more seriously. As of the beginning of this year, that would have seem like an insane proposition (Bush did win the state by more than 20%) and the extended primary season clearly made Democrats more enthused in this state.
Mississippi, on the other hand, seems to be anchoring itself in the safe McCain column. Remember that some Democrats did talk about this state at the beginning of the summer, lumping it with Southern states like North Carolina, Virginia and Georgia. They argued that Obama would boost black turnout enough to put them in the competitive column. That argument never fully made sense in Mississippi (the state is rated safe McCain in my ratings), where Democrats start with a huge deficit and where the vote is so racially polarized that Obama would need to make significant inroads among white voters to overcome Bush’s 20% margin.
Kerry got 14% of the white vote there (!), as much as Bush did nationally among the black vote, and are we really to believe that a black candidate could do much better than that? There no evidence that Obama will succeed in appealing to Southern whites, but consider that his favorability rating among Mississippi whites in this poll is a shocking 18%!
Meanwhile, in down-the-ballot polls:
- In the Mississippi Senate race (polling history), Rocker Wicker maintains his large lead over Musgrove in Rasmussen’s poll. He leads 47% to 42%, 52% to 43%. Both have a favorable rating above 50% - though Wicker’s is a bit higher. The racial gap is smaller than in the presidential race: Musgrove only gets 83% of the black vote, manages to get 22% of whites.
- In NV-02, a Research 2000 poll finds Rep. Dean Heller leading Jill Derby 47% to 42%.
- In AL-03, a Capital Survey Research Center poll shows Rep. Rogers handily beating his Democratic challenger Joshua Segall, 54% to 33%.
Rasmussen’s numbers from MS-Sen are undoubtedly worrisome news for Democrats and a boost to GOP morale. Republicans were hoping that Wicker would get a boost as the electorate becomes more polarized (especially due to the conjunction with the presidential race). Musgrove will not have a “D” next to his name, which could help him escape Obama’s drag and perform better among white voters (though it could also reduce his total among black voters). This is the same margin as last month’s Rasmussen numbers, but previous Rasmussen polls (and all other surveys from this state) had found a toss-up. It will be interesting to see what other surveys have to say, but we had always known that Musgrove would be better off if this special election had been held in March as it should have been.
The two House races are interesting as well, as they both come from the list of third-tier races that my latest House ratings pointed out will be particularly fun to follow over the next few weeks: AL-03 is actually not that dominant a Republican district, much less, in any case than AL-02. Democrats have been touting Joshua Segall, but this poll clearly suggests he will have a lot of work to do over the next few months. NV-02 looks like it will be a better option for Democrats to contest: This is also a district Bush won convincingly; but Heller won the election with a much narrower margin than he ought to have in 2006, and that was already against Jill Derby. Since then, Democrats have had registration gains in the state and in this district, and while the seat still clearly leans retention, Derby has a clear shot.
Posted by Taniel
Posted by Taniel
Posted by Taniel
