McCain Shows Strength in Blue States
By Alan Stewart Carl | Related entries in 2008 Election, McCainCourtesy of Ed Morrissey, it looks like Barack Obama’s numbers are falling and John McCain’s numbers are rising in general election polling in two traditionally “blue†states.
It’s too early to read much into general election polls, but this data coming out of Michigan and Pennsylvania leads me to repeat what I’ve been thinking ever since McCain secured the Republican nomination: don’t expect the electoral map to keep its much-loved color coding this year. Some interesting forces and interesting candidates are in play. I doubt both candidates can follow a 50 state strategy, but they should be able to expand their focus well beyond the narrow strategies employed in the last two elections.
Blue states going red. Red states going blue. Should be fun.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 and is filed under 2008 Election, McCain. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
March 12th, 2008 at 7:32 pm
I still think it’s an open question whether McCain’s appeal to non-Republicans will hold up to a national political campaign that wll point out how conservative his record really is. It may play great in Arizona but in the blue states? Not so much. As you said, polls about the general election at this point probably don’t mean too much.
March 12th, 2008 at 7:46 pm
Care to make it interesting?
:-)
I keep hearing this, from you, Barone, and others. And I remain extremely skeptical. I can see some movement among the purple states that usually lean one way going the other way, and MAYBE a little movement among the states that almost always go one way but have been doing so by diminishing margins.
But I’m very very very skeptical that we’ll see BOTH blue going red AND red going blue at the same time. More likely, we’ll see one or the other as part of an overall trend for one candidate.
If Obama looks strong come November, I wouldn’t be that surprised to see him take a few southern states. And if McCain looks strong, I wouldn’t be that surprised to see him take a few of the “usually blue but lately by a smaller margin” states, like say PA.
Funny thing about the latest PA polls I’ve been checking. Hillary is ahead by like 15 points. But they perform similarly versus McCain. I’ve seen this trend for some time now, which tends to give the lie to Hillary’s claim that she’s better suited to win the big states in November because she’s the preferred dem there. The polls keeps saying its not so.
March 12th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
A wager, eh? If Obama gets the nod, I may take you up on that.
March 12th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
I think Hillary has been (perhaps inadvertently) helping McCain with her praise of McCain’s experience and attacks on Obama. I wish the dems would pick their candidate so they could focus on fighting McCain not each other. At the moment McCain is still able to run as a maverick (he’s even getting the anti-war vote) but if the democrats can pull him into focus soon that will change.
March 13th, 2008 at 5:55 am
McCain is doing ok at the moment because of a few things, the recent spike in Iraq violence has been downplayed by the media, violence is going up again in Iraq. And people haven’t been hit too much by the downturn yet, come november of next year neither of these things will be true and McCain will be fading fast
March 13th, 2008 at 6:13 am
This is merely due to the fact that media hasn’t been covering the fact that violence is up in Iraq again, and the falling economy hasn’t hit people’s wallets yet.
Just wait until summer when the Iraq war is back in the news and gas is over 4 dollars a gallon, and then McCain won’t be doing so well
March 13th, 2008 at 7:18 am
James
Look at the history – it wasn’t inadvertent – she knew what she was saying. McCain isn’t going to win, in fact he’s going to get creamed – that’s why the Rep party selected an old Rep with decent name recognition near the end of his political career. Your watching the Rep party grasp at anything they can to maintain some direction. The unfortunate thing is that the Dem party is consuming itself because the Clintons refuse to admit defeat (event hough it’s inevitable) and go away – there is no way they can win through any type of democratic process, only “club politics”.