Polls: Obama Leads In 6 of 8 Battleground States And Deflects McCain Attacks
Some new polls present a portrait that isn’t a pretty one for Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain one day before the 2008 election: Democratic candidate Sen. Barack Obama leads in 6 out of 8 battleground states, Obama is widening his lead nationally, and polling finds Obama has deflected McCain’s and the GOP’s recent attacks.
The polling, coming from three separate polls done by Reuters/Zogby and by The Washington Post-ABC News, portray an Obama campaign heading towards victory — meaning that a McCain victory would dwarf Democrat Harry Truman’s surprise 1948 victory over Republican Thomas Dewey and be talked about for years.
One key Zogby finding: McCain is holding onto his Republican base while Obama is winning the independent vote and holding his own base. There is an irony here since, after the conventions, Democrats feared McCain was the only Republican who could expand his party’s base and appeal to independents.
Here’s a summary of the polls.
ON THE BATTLEGROUND STATES Reuters/Zogby:
Democrat Barack Obama leads Republican John McCain in six of eight key battleground states one day before the U.S. election, including the big prizes of Florida and Ohio, according to a series of Reuters/Zogby polls released on Monday.
Obama holds a 7-point edge over McCain among likely U.S. voters in a separate Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby national tracking poll, up 1 percentage point from Sunday. The telephone poll has a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points.
Obama heads into Tuesday’s voting in a comfortable position, with McCain struggling to overtake Obama’s lead in every national opinion poll and to hold off his challenge in about a dozen states won by President George W. Bush in 2004.
The new state polls showed Obama with a 1-point lead in Missouri and 2-point lead in Florida, within the margin of error of 4.1 percentage points. But Obama also holds leads in Ohio, Virginia and Nevada — all states won by Bush in 2004.
ON OBAMA PICKING UP SUPPORT NATIONALLY Zogby Reuters reports this:
As Election Day nears in the U.S. Presidential race, Democrat Barack Obama has increased his lead to 7.1 points over Republican John McCain, up from a 5.7 point advantage in yesterday’s report, the latest Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby daily tracking poll shows.
Zogby writes:
Barack Obama is where he needs to be and John McCain is not. In a multi-candidate race, assuming the minor candidates can win around 2%, 51% can win. Obama holds the groups that he needs and continues to hold a big lead among independents and his base. McCain seems to be holding his base without expanding it or moving into Obama’s territory.strong>
ON OBAMA DEFLECTING RECENT MCCAIN AND GOP ATTACKS The Washington Post/ABC News poll:
With one day to go, Democrat Barack Obama appears to have rebuffed recent GOP efforts to label him as “too liberal” or too big a gamble.
The new Washington Post-ABC News tracking poll puts Obama well out in front over Republican John McCain and finds that Obama has firmly reestablished his advantage on handling the economy, beaten back a challenge on taxes and has an edge in terms of perceptions about which candidate would better deal with an unexpected major crisis.
The McCain campaign, meanwhile, has countered with improved outreach into the tossup states, neutralizing what had been a big advantage for the Democrat 10 days ago. More than a third of all voters in the six states The Post calls “up for grabs” — Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Montana, Missouri and Indiana — said they have heard from the McCain campaign in the past week. That is up sharply from the third week of October and on par with the number who have been contacted by Obama’s campaign.
Obama and McCain roughly split the vote in the six states combined — 51 percent back Obama, and 47 percent support McCain. Overall in the tracking poll, Obama holds an 11-point advantage, at the top end of the seven-to-11-point range he has held since the final presidential debate in mid-October.
Going into tomorrow’s election, Real Clear Politics’ electoral college map has Obama with 278 votes (enough to win), McCain at 132 with 128 toss ups. CLICK HERE to see the map and a long list of individual polls.
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