Polls: Obama finds turf to be friendly in battleground states

The Democrat has a six-point lead over McCain in Ohio, surveys show.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

WASHINGTON — A raft of new polls suggests that Democrat Barack Obama begins the general election campaign with an upper hand in the upper Midwest, home to the nation’s most concentrated collection of battleground states.

In Wisconsin, decided by four-tenths of a percentage point for Democrat John Kerry in 2004, Obama leads Republican John McCain 52 percent to 39 percent in a Quinnipiac University poll.

In Minnesota, decided by 3.5 percentage points for Kerry, Obama leads McCain 54 percent to 37 percent in a survey that the same pollster released June 26.

The Wisconsin poll was the second in two weeks to show Obama with a 13-point lead over McCain. Another recent survey put Obama’s lead at nine points.

The numbers come with the traditional caveats: Election Day is more than four months away, and Kerry four years ago and Democrat Michael Dukakis in 1988 also led at this stage of their races before losing.

“Don’t make the mistake of thinking this is predictive of the outcome in November ... this is the most competitive region in the country, and I see no reason to rethink that,” said University of Minnesota political scientist Larry Jacobs.

In a briefing with reporters last Wednesday, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said: “Wisconsin will be highly competitive. Demographically, you would assume that it tightens up.”

But Plouffe said leading in the public polling in Wisconsin and Minnesota as well as Iowa, three of the nine closest states in 2004, “is a good place to start.”

McCain spokeswoman Leah Yoon said her campaign expected Obama to receive “a significant bump from the primary win, upwards of double digits” but was confident McCain “will resonate with voters in November.”

Yoon said that “if anyone didn’t think Wisconsin was going to be an uphill battle for Senator McCain, they were wrong.”

Most national polls have pointed to a bounce for Obama since he wrapped up the nomination, although individual surveys vary.

Obama and McCain were tied in the national Gallup tracking poll released June 26. Other polls have put Obama ahead by anywhere from low single digits to double digits.

In some ways, the polling in individual battlegrounds is even more daunting for McCain at this early stage, when the campaigns in targeted states are just ramping up on the ground and on TV.

Quinnipiac, based in Connecticut, has surveyed seven major battlegrounds in the past two weeks — three won by President Bush in 2004 and four won by Kerry.

“If these numbers were to hold, it would be very difficult to see how Senator Obama doesn’t win the presidency by a comfortable margin,” said Peter Brown of Quinnipiac, although he added, “We have a long way to go to November.”

McCain’s numbers in Wisconsin and Minnesota are discouraging for the Arizonan, because based on recent history, the upper Midwest is his best opportunity to make inroads on Democratic turf. Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan were three of the five closest blue states in 2004, and McCain has targeted all three in his initial ad campaign.

What’s more, the GOP is holding its national convention in the Twin Cities because of the region’s political importance. Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty has been touted as a potential McCain running mate largely because of his possible impact on the ticket, not just in Minnesota but in neighboring Wisconsin and Iowa.

Jacobs said he saw the region as remaining highly competitive in 2008, partly because of McCain’s appeal to independents.

But some analysts believe Wisconsin and Minnesota will pose even bigger obstacles for McCain than they did for Bush in 2004. Wisconsin was the closest blue state in ’04, but in the Quinnipiac survey, Michigan is now more competitive. Although Quinnipiac shows Obama winning white voters in Wisconsin and Minnesota, he is losing them in Michigan.

The Obama campaign rates Wisconsin and Michigan as among the country’s top battlegrounds and is airing TV ads in both. But it ranks Minnesota as a safer Democratic state and is not advertising there.

initially.