Chart this - who is more electable?
Sun Mar 09, 2008 at 01:37:15 AM PDT
It's late.
But I found the following table from pollster.com the most instructive one I have seen which visually lays out the head to head polling for the democratic general election. It gives a gander at the question "who is more electable?"
In staring at this until my eyes glazed over, something interesting jumped out at me: While Clinton is weaker than Obama in a general election matchup against McCain in 19 states (combined 142 EV), Obama is weaker than Clinton in just 7(combined 95 EV).
For this purpose I have defined "weaker" as "moved the state one category closer to strong R"
But there's more...
In which states is Clinton polling stronger than Obama by a significant amount? Massachusetts,NJ, Florida, PA, Tennesee, WV, and Arkansas
In which states is Obama stronger? Hawaii, Maine, Washington, Wisconsin, Colorado, Delaware,Iowa, Oregon, New Mexico, Nevada, North Dakota, New Hampshire, Virginia, Texas, North Carolina, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota, Alaska.
It's also interesting to look at the McCain numbers vs Obama. McCain has "locked up" only 118 EV (strong McCain). In McCain vs Clinton, McCain has "locked up" 5 additional states for a total of 147.
In the "win" column for the dems, Obama starts out with slightly less EV's
(244 to 250) But slightly more of those are in "strong dem" territory, and Obama has more than double the EV's in the undecided column (9 states and 138 EV's to 5 states and 65 EV's )
So here's the chart... brown circles are states Hillary is weaker than Obama, Orange states are ones she is ahead. Interestingly enough, Obama has not yet campaigned in the only two big states she is significantly stronger in (FL, PA.) I am curious to see how those numbers will change after he campaigns there.

Additional analysis, and charts by Mark Blumenthal