Gallup's 50 state approval ratings for Barack Obama over the first six months of 2009 came out yesterday and one thing really caught my attention: his approval in Colorado ranked 43rd out of the 50 states, trailing deep red places like Kentucky, Alabama, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Mississippi.
Obama won Colorado by nine points last year, so it's a surprise his approval rating there is lagging so many places where he got trounced by John McCain.
This isn't the first evidence though that Obama has a problem in Colorado. When we polled the state back in April while he was still as popular as ever, his approval was only 49%, five points below what he earned at the polls in November. That was the first state we'd polled where we found Obama's approval rating below his vote share.
So there are a couple of pieces of evidence now that Obama may have a Colorado problem, although I certainly don't have any explanations. It does look like we'll be polling there this weekend unless some other state makes a comeback in the next 20 hours.
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4 comments:
Colorado (along with most of the interior West) was much more anti-Bush/McCain than pro-Obama. There's a strong anti-government, anti-Washington sentiment that's always been there.
I think the 2012 reelection map for Obama will be quite different, with Missouri, Ohio and Florida the key battlegrounds. He won't win anything in the West beyond California, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii.
I don't think so. Mike forgets about the huge Hispanic growth in the West. There's a reason Obama won NV and NM by double-digits and it had less to do with anti-Bush sentiment than it did with boosting turnout among younger voters and Hispanics.
If anything, Obama might even add another Western state to his column in 2012: Arizona
mikelow1885 is deeply wrong about Obama in the West in 2012. Obama's strength in 3 Bush states he won there, CO/NM/NV, came overwhelmingly from changing the turnout model to bring in a lot more Hispanic and young white voters. That model will hold in 2012 even though Obama's absence from the ballot will keep turnout less favorable for Democrats in 2010.
Obama will easily carry NM and NV in 2012, and while CO will be closer than those 2 states as it was in 2008, Obama still will have an edge there.
mikelow1885 kind of hit on my point. Some of these states that Obama flipped are very schitzo. Nevada, Colorado, NM, etc. are very tedious for Obama, Colorado, in particular, is a very anti-tax state.
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