Georgia on their mind!
Insider Advantage has people talking Georgia this morning:
A New InsiderAdvantage / PollPosition survey conducted June 18 of registered likely voters in the November presidential contest shows Sen. John McCain leading Sen. Barack Obama by a single point in Georgia, making the race in Georgia a statistical tie. Libertarian Bob Barr, a former Republican Congressman from Georgia, received 6 percent of the vote.
The telephone survey of 408 registered likely voters is weighted for age, race, gender, and political affiliation. The survey has a margin of error of +/- 5%. It was conducted with InsiderAdvantage’s research partner Majority Opinion Research. PollPosition is InsiderAdvantage’s new branding name (look for additional information and expansion of PollPosition in the coming months).
The Results:
McCain: 44%
Obama: 43%
Barr: 6%
Undecided: 7%
Georgia? A state that has appeared to be one of the very few (and I do mean very few) to be trending towards the GOP? Georgia is on the map? Apparently. According to the Real Clear Politics average of recent polling out of the state, John McCain’s lead over Barack Obama is just 49.7 percent to 41.3 percent. Nate Silver gives Obama a 28 percent shot at carrying the state — not overwhelming, but certainly much higher than I would have anticipated.
So will Obama carry Georgia with the help of Bob Barr, who represented the state in Congress? At this point, it doesn’t even really matter. It would be yet another back-breaker were it the case that Obama beat McCain in Georgia, making it that much more difficult (if not impossible) for McCain to make it to the White House without those 15 electoral votes. But even more important, by making the McCain campaign play defense in a state that the GOP hasn’t had to defend during the last two presidential elections, thus spreading its resources even more thinly, Obama increases the likelihood that he is able to win overall. It almost makes you wonder why the Democrats weren’t operating under a 50-state strategy earlier…
McCain, meanwhile, is happy for it:
The McCain campaign on Thursday said they welcome Obama’s expenditure.
“We’re obviously overjoyed when Barack Obama spends money in a state that we are very, very confident that John McCain will carry in November,” McCain spokesman Jeff Sadosky said.
And Nate Silver is still not drinking the Kool Aid:
I doubt that the state is truly within the margin of error right now. But it is certainly close enough — with the known unknowns of the Barr vote and African-American turnout — to be included in Obama’s ad buy, as the candidate is doing. This may also be a reminder that you can often infer something about a campaign’s internal polling in a state before the public data catches up.
Also today Obama’s first national ad has begins running in 18 states: Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Virginia.
Joe Sudbay (DC) at AMERICAblog has the ad and notes, “Bush won fourteen of the states on that list — all except Michigan, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.”
Matthew Yglesias calls it, ahem, “a bit unsubtle.”
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Matthew Yglesias's reaction to Obama's as as being 'unsubtle' floored me.
Has he watched any political ads latelly, or ever?
Has he seen any of the ads with the family grouped around the cadidate (family man with family values)? Even a divorced family values canddidate in NJ gathered his children for the photo ad..
How subtle are the American flags behind McCain's speeches, or the troops in attendance for Bush appearances?
McCains speech on offshore drilling was made in front of a cheering crownd of oilmen. How subtle was that?
i wonder if Yglesias has been away on vacation while politics goes on in the USA.
With outright pandering left and right, this queeziness about the lack of subtlety
strikes me as bizarre, so bizarre as to make me wonder if any ad by Obama could pass his scrutiny without him finding some handy quibble with it. Perhaps it' would too long, too short, too serious, too light-hearted. or, if nothing else, maybe his ears could be found wanting.
While Georgia is pretty reliably “red” these days, don't forget it wasn't that long ago (at least to folks my age) that Jimmy Carter was the very popular governor there.
And when you look at the big picture, it seems to me it's the Obama team using its huge money lead and fundraising ability to full advantage. For instance, look at what he did to Hillary in Pennsylvania. Despite all the breathless reporting by the punditry, the Obama campaign knew they couldn't win there. But they spent heavily, forcing Hillary to spend huge amounts to defend a state tailor-made for her candidacy. And it essentially bankrupted her campaign, for almost nothing when balanced against Obama's gains in NC.
Now multiply that in the general to include the targets of Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Virginia, and you can see where this is going.
The Obama team is betting that they'll be able to take at least a few red/swing states, while forcing McCain to expend scarce resources to defend them all.
Will it work? We'll see. But I think a lot of the Republican “outcry” over Obama skipping public financing (this from many of the same people who label campaign finance reform the death of free speech) is in reality due to deep concern over this very scenario.