Wednesday,
September 15 2004
KERRY STATE SLIDE CONTINUES: There's been a flood
of state polls out over the last forty-eight hours, most
of it showing a continuing deterioration in John Kerry's
position in the Electoral College.
First,
the bright spots. A new
Gallup poll shows Kerry maintaining a 6-point lead in
Michigan and a Minnesota
Star-Tribune poll released today shows him with a conspicuously
large 9-point lead over Bush.
The
big news, however, is in Wisconsin where three
new polls by Gallup, Rasmussen, and Strategic Vision
show Bush moving ahead of Kerry by 10, 2 and 8 points, respectively.
(Note to future candidates: Wisconsin voters do not think
highly of people who think the Packers home stadium is called
"Lambert
Field.").
Because
of the shift in Bush's direction, we've moved Wisconsin
in our RCP Electoral
Count from "toss up" to "leaning Bush."
As a result, Bush
now leads Kerry 279-228.
We
still have three states listed as toss ups: NV, NM, and
PA. In Pennsylvania - a state Kerry must win to have any
hope - the race
remains a dead tie. In Nevada
and New Mexico,
the most recent polls out of each of those states that aren't
Zogby online polls have Bush ahead, though narrowly.
In
other potentially ominous news for the Kerry camp, the polling
out of New Jersey
shows that it's getting awfully close to becoming a "toss
up" state as well. And two new polls out of New
York today also show significant movement in Bush's
direction, though the bottom would have to fall out of the
Kerry campaign for him to lose the state.
Ironically
for the Democrats, the bad news in the polls for their presidential
nominee is juxtaposed with some pretty good news for their
hopes in the Senate. In Florida, a new poll shows Betty
Castor narrowly leading Mel Martinez and in Oklahoma Brad
Carson has inched ahead of Tom Coburn. (Incidentally, we've
put together a new page rounding up all the latest polls
in the competitive Senate races this year.) There's
a lot of race left, of course, but holding Florida and stealing
Oklahoma would be huge for the Democrats. - T. Bevan
11:42 am Link
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