I almost did a spit-take this morning when I read in my local (Rochester, NY) paper that Obama's lead in the Empire State has shrunk noticeably in the last few months.
In fact, the Siena Poll says McCain leads Obama everywhere except NYC(!?).
Puzzling (and somewhat disturbing) details post foldo.
The full Siena poll is here, and the relevant details from my local paper are (emphasis added):
Republican presidential candidate John McCain is down only 5 percentage points to Democratic candidate Barack Obama in New York, as Obama's lead in the heavily blue state continues to decline, a Siena College poll showed Monday.
With seven weeks until Election Day, Obama leads McCain 46 percent to 41 percent among likely voters in the state. McCain's pick of vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin has aided Obama's steady decline in New York, the Siena poll found. Obama led by eight percentage points in August, 13 points in July and 18 points in June, when he led 51 percent to 33 percent.
Upstate, McCain holds a 45 percent to 40 percent lead over Obama, while in the New York City suburbs, he held a 49 percent to 39 percent advantage. Obama has a 54 percent to 34 percent edge in Democratic New York City.
Not to put too fine a point on the matter, but WTF??? I know how deeply Republican parts of this state can be, having lived for over 20 years in Binghamton and since 2004 in Rochester. But even so I was shocked. McCain is up by 5 in "upstate", and up by 10 in the NYC 'burbs? Presumably the financial turmoil on Wall Street will curb those numbers a bit when people get a rude and painful reminder of just how catastrophic Republican rules is for 95+% of the population.
Either this is a wickedly bad set of polls, or Obama has a much bigger problem in my state than I (or, I suspect, a lot of other Kossacks) assumed.
(For those not familiar with the expression: "Upstate NY" is typically used to refer to everything in NY that's not Long Island, NYC, or the NYC 'burbs. The people all the way out here in Western NY don't look kindly on the term.)