Apr. 01 absentee ballot for overseas voters

General Election Polls: Who Does Better Against McCain State by State?

 
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News: Updated Apr. 01


Both beat McCain ≥ 5%
McCain beats both ≥ 5%
Obama > Clinton by ≥ 5%
Obama > Clinton by < 5%
Clinton > Obama by < 5%
Clinton > Obama by ≥ 5%
 
In brown states, Obama does better than Clinton against McCain. In pink states Clinton does better.
Sometimes this means: does not lose as badly
But white centers are statistical ties.

Democratic primaries Republican primaries Obama vs. McCain Clinton vs. McCain


News from the Votemaster

No April Fool's Day jokes like "John McCain died of a heart attack last night" or "Barack Obama surprisingly withdrew from the race this morning." Just politics as usual.

Progressive author David Sirota has an interesting observation about where Barack Obama has done well and where he has done poorly. He constructed the graph below, which shows how well Obama did as a function of the percentage of the population that is black.

Sirota

What it shows is that in states with few blacks (like Wyoming and Idaho) Obama does well. In states with many blacks (like Georgia and Mississippi) he also does well. However, in states with a medium concentration of blacks (like Ohio and Tennessee) Clinton does well. What's the explanation? Sirota says it is race. In places like Wyoming and Idaho, race simply isn't an issue. There are so few blacks in these states that many people don't even know a black person, so race is simply not part of anyone's daily life. In contrast, in Georgia and Mississippi, it is a huge part of everyone's life, but since most whites are Republicans, blacks make up a very large percentage of the Democratic voters (often approaching 50%) and their overwhelming preference for Obama has carried him to victory.

The problem for him comes in the states with enough blacks that race is definitely an issue but not enough to affect the election much. This theory would predict Clinton victories in Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Kentucky and Obama victories in North Carolina, South Dakota, and Montana. Some states are omitted for certain reasons (like the candidates home states). See the article for the details.

Politico has a report on what might happen in a credentials committee fight at the DNC if the seating of Florida and Michigan comes to that. If you did see yesterday's post here (with a link to Karl Rove's thoughts on how to manipulate a convention--a subject he knows well), check it out.

We have three new primary polls today, one in Kentucky, where Hillary Clinton has a massive lead over Barack Obama (58% to 29%) and two in North Carolina, where Obama has a smaller, but still solid, lead.

State Pollster End date Clinton Obama McCain Huckabee Paul
Kentucky SurveyUSA Mar. 30 58% 29%      
North Carolina ARG Mar. 30 38% 51%      
North Carolina Insider Advantage Mar. 27 34% 49%      

General election polls show Obama winning Washington state, losing Alabama, and in a statistical tie in Michigan and New Jersey. In the same polls, Clinton is similar, except for being slightly behind in Washington state. The details are on the general election maps linked to below the main map above.

The polling results for all primaries and caucuses are available as a Web page and in .csv format.

Here are the delegate totals from various news sources rounded to integers (Democrats Abroad has 22 delegates, each with 1/2 vote). The sources differ because in most caucus states, no delegates to the national conventions have been chosen yet, just delegates to the district, county, or state convention so there is some guesswork involved. Furthermore, some of the unpledged delegates are elected at state conventions in May or June. Finally, the PLEOs (Party Leaders and Elected Officials) sometimes waver and may tell different reporters slightly different stories that they interpret differently.

Delegates

Source Clinton Obama BHO-HRC Edwards McCain Romney Huckabee Paul
Washington Post 1501 1631 +130   1334   278  
NY Times 1472 1626 +154 12 1162 142 232 5
AP 1499 1624 +125 18 1334 257 278 14
CNN 1486 1625 +139 26 1325 255 267 16
ABC 1492 1623 +131 32 1267 273 272 14
CBS 1493 1624 +131 26 1241 149 231 10
MSNBC 1506 1630 +124 26 1266 293 262 14

Needed to win: Democrats 2024, Republicans 1191.

Here is another source for delegate totals.



-- The Votemaster
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