As tremayne has noted, Obama has clearly opened a significant lead in the tracking polls, which can only translate into good news on the ground in specific states. But that got me wondering about what we could reasonably expect to see in terms of the overall geography. Rather than an exhaustive look, like I've done before, the ongoing financial/political crisis hasn't left a lot of time for me, so I decided to look at a few key states, which I've collected in the following table. Ohio represents the ultimate traditional swing state and Virginia is the key new swing states in the South, while North Carolina is a "pinch me" swing states in the South, and Missouri is a "pinch me" swing state in the Midwest.
First a quick note: because of overlaps in polling times, the alignment of dates is not exact, but no more than one poll had more than one day of polling outside the range for each state.
The results are fairly easy to summarize:
(1) Every state but Missouri got worse for Obama from August to early September.
(2) Every state improved from early September to mid September.
(3) Every state but Ohio improved from mid September to late September (and Ohio slipped only 0.1%).
(4) The strongest moves since Summer have been in the "pinch me" states--Missouri and North Carolina, where 8-point deficits have shrunk to virtual ties.
(5) If Obama had surged as strongly in the key swing states as he did in the surprise ones, he would be virtually set to win the election today.
My final subjective comment on all the above is that once again, if Obama had run as a consistent populist, Ohio and Virginia would almost certainly be safely in his column today.
STATE BLOGS
