Tuesday, September 9, 2008

NC President

John McCain 48
Barack Obama 44
Bob Barr 4

The race in North Carolina is pretty much where it was before the two party conventions- close but with a definite advantage for McCain. A concern for Obama rising out of this poll is that undecided whites have gone from 10% three weeks ago to just 3% now, and two thirds of them have gone into the McCain column.

PPP found a similar trend in a recent Florida poll, and Obama will obviously have difficulty winning in the swing states if the voters who have been reporting as undecided all summer start heading toward the Republicans across the board. At the same time most pollsters are taking a somewhat conservative approach to their turnout projections, and if Barack Obama's ground game ends up being everything it's been cracked up to be there could be some election night surprises.

McCain leads 61-32 with white voters. 35% is probably the lowest share of the white vote Obama could receive and still hope to win the state. Obama's up 85-6 with black voters.

The impact of running mate selections on the race in North Carolina is more complicated than it has been in some other places. Overall 42% of voters say the Palin choice makes them more likely to vote for McCain while 32% say Joe Biden on the ticket helps Obama.

That news is not as good for the Republicans as it might sound though- 75% of Republicans are enthusiastic about the Palin choice while just 43% of Democrats are happy with the Biden choice. Those Republicans may now be more excited about voting for McCain than they were before, but their votes still count the same.

Biden, on the other hand, polls better with independents than Palin. 36% of them say his place on the ticket makes them more likely to choose Obama compared to 20% who say it's a negative. Palin generates slightly more 'more likely to vote for' responses (37%) from independents, but also gets nearly twice as many 'less likely to vote for' respondents (35%) from that same group.

Here's the bottom line in North Carolina: Barack Obama will not win the state by convincing folks who voted for George W. Bush to cross over and vote for him this time. His chances are almost completely predicated on how many new voters he can bring in. He won the primary that way, and he'll have to do the same in the general.

Full results here

8 comments:

RS said...

Tom:
I see from your earlier post (on SUSA's 58-38) that PPP does not weight by party ID. Does that open up the possibility that this result (with Dems +13 & apart from turnout) might be the high watermark for Obama?

Also, do you do something similar to SUSA - I hear they weight their sample according to the state demographics and then apply the LV screen?

Finally, I get the feeling that McCain's national numbers are up mainly due to a bounce largely confined to red states, see this:
http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2008/9/9/1747/45664/161#c161

Any opinions?
Thanks.

Anonymous said...

RS: I believe that the NC SOS office has almost exactly the same registration advantage for Democrats: D-45, R-33.

PAUL TERRELL said...

The DailyKos is a hate blog who has done more to help the Republican cause by it's launch of a smear campaign against Palin. I would not call the DailyKos a independent and unbiased source.

Anonymous said...

Paul perhaps you should read what is in the link before crticizing it. Just a word to the wise.

Anonymous said...

Tom,

I need to give it to you. They released the survey USA poll on tuesday. You took them to task and did a over night poll to debunk it. Then, immediately on wednesday (today)you went to WPTF news and gave your analysis of the presidential race being close, palin does not have any effect and tried to nullify the abcnews 11 poll.

Excellent!!That is politics.

RS said...

@paul terrell (potential State Rep?):
What anonymous said @12:59. That dkos comment was written by me, and is a straight-up reporting of polls.

My "feeling" is backed up by Gallup's region-wise numbers:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/108037/Candidate-Support-Region.aspx

This was pointed out by another dkos diarist:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/9/10/10169/7586/567/593363

...but I have provided you the Gallup source, so you can verify the information yourself.

Tom Jensen said...

Thanks Ranjit, and I appreciate your commenting here. We always welcome Republicans who can disagree without being disagreeable.

Anonymous said...

Tom to follow up on your movement of white undecided trends. Isn't there a theory that undecideds first break for the incumbent (or at least break heavily for the incumbent with some going to the challenger), then a good chunk of the remainder move to the challenger, and then the rest finally move in the end right before the election toward the incumbent. If so, could all you be seeing is evidence of the first break?

 
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