All Politics Is Local

19 June 2008 |permalink | email article

Barack Obama gets a slight bump in two of the first major national polls since the presidential primary season ended, Washington Post-ABC News and Gallup surveys indicate.

But such polls are not as meaningful as state polls in assessing possible electoral vote totals.

A new Quinnipiac University poll of three major battleground states as summer begins shows Obama ahead to become the next president.

Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio have 68 of the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the presidency. No candidate has won the White House without taking at least two of the three states.

Obama is ahead by a statistically significant margin in each state – leading by 47% to 43% in Florida; 48 to 42% in Ohio and 52 to 40% in Pennsylvania.

Peter A. Brown, the poll’s assistance director, told MSNBC that if Obama wins the Keystone State he will win the election.

Both candidates are making strong appeals to self-identified independents. Quinnipiac has Obama ahead among independents in Florida and Pennsylvania and 2 points behind McCain in Ohio. 

McCain is hurt because President Bush’s approval rating is just 27% or less in each of the three states, and because by a 2-t-1 margin voters say the Iraq War was a mistake.

Quotes of the Day

“Five months from now I wanted them to remember that this occasion brought them together.” Tim Russert’s son, Luke, 22, describing in a plea for unity how he requested Barack Obama and John McCain to sit next to each other at his father’s funeral and talk, quietly.

“Well I refuse to be lectured on national security by people who are responsible for the most disastrous set of foreign policy decisions in the recent history of the United States. The other side likes to use 9/11 as a political bludgeon. Well, let’s talk about 9/11.” – Obama, to Time, after the first meeting of his new Senior Working Group on National Security yesterday. 

“Still looking for them. We didn’t realize, nor did anyone else, that Saddam Hussein felt like he needed to play like he had weapons of mass destruction. It may have been, however, that in his mind all this was really a bluff.” – President Bush in London, when asked by The Observer reporter about W.M.D. in Iraq.

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