Big Picture on Last Night's Polls

We were so busy crunching the numbers last night that there wasn't a lot of time to look at the big picture. Here's what I thought was important in those polls:

-Barack Obama is doing better with Republicans than John McCain is doing with Democrats in every state we released last night except West Virginia:

State	Obama Republican %	McCain Democratic %
Colorado	13	10
Michigan	13	8
Minnesota	12	6
New Mexico	17	16
Oregon	11	9

So much for the Democrats' party unity problem. Who would have expected that one three or four months ago? The party is clearly behind its nominee, and McCain's degree of party unity actually even seems to be declining a little bit relative to the summer.

-Utter domination with independents. I'll just let the numbers speak for themseves:

State	Independents
Colorado	Obama 60-36
Michigan	Obama 53-40
Minnesota	Obama 55-37
New Mexico	Obama 66-28
Oregon	Obama 53-41

When you're putting up those kinds of numbers with voters in the middle you're going to win.

-Banking a lead. Early voting is obviously more important in places like Colorado and New Mexico where a significant chunk of votes are cast through that medium but even in states like Michigan where those who have already voted probably just did it through an absentee ballot, Obama is doing much better among votes that are already in the can than McCain is:

State	Already Voted
Colorado	Obama 58-41
Michigan	Obama 60-40
Minnesota	Obama 59-39
New Mexico	Obama 64-36
Oregon	Obama 64-35

We have a pretty tight likely voter screen and I do think that John McCain is going to do a lot better with the votes still to come, but it's always better to have acutal votes than speculative votes.

One last point: I've been pretty skeptical of the Arizona polling all week but Obama's remarkable performance in New Mexico makes me think there might be something to it. If Barack actually goes there before the conclusion of the campaign we *may* try to sneak in one extra poll.