Two new polls from swing states today.

In FloridaRasmussen shows McCain up 2 counting leaners, a 3 point swing from the July Rasmussen Poll which showed Obama up 1.  All in all this is a better result than other recent Florida polls have shown (SurveyUSA had McCain up 6, InsiderAdvantage had McCain up 3).

One thing to watch, Rasmussen notes something that turned up in the LA Times national poll rising Obama negatives.  The LA Times noted

Obama's favorable rating has sunk to 48% from 59% since the last Times Bloomberg poll in June. At the same time, his negative rating has risen to 35% from 27%.

It should be noted that the Quinnipiac Poll showing Obama up 47-42 (the LA Times was 45-43) found no similar change in Obama's favorability.

There are times when living in this country just becomes too surreal for words.  Like when a majority of the viewers of a certain news channel come to believe, despite all evidence to the contrary,  that a dictator was involved in attack on America when he really wasn’t.

I could go on, but really, nothing could compare to today.  Today John McCain is engaged in a debate about energy with Paris Hilton.  Read that sentence again.  The Republican nominee for President of the United States has been handed his ass to him by someone best known for...Why the hell is Paris Hilton famous?  Who the hell knows – she just is.  

In early June I posted an article here about the usefulness of June polling.   Today’s post updates those numbers with numbers from July and September.  On the flip I also present two election predictions based on academic models.

The polling numbers from July show one thing: most Presidential races are decided in the summer, not the fall.  The table below compares shows the state of each race since 1976 in early July and the first week in September.  Also shown is the undecided.

To read the pundit press and blogsphere is be told that the Democratic Party is severely split, and that Clinton supporters are on the verge of leaving the party.  In fact, Clinton supporters themselves in blogsphere are repeating this.  See for example BTD's post this morning on Talk Left.

But is this true?

No, it isn't.  

The table below compares Obama's performance among Democrats in the most recent CBS CBS poll poll taken during the summer in 2004, 2000 and 1996.  This poll is almost identical the most recent Rasmussen poll.

Yesterday I thought Kid Oakland did a great job capturing the history that was Obama's clinching of the nomination.

So did Le Monde.  For those who don't know about Le Monde: it is one the World's truly great newspapers (printed in Paris).  

Here is the quote in Le Monde:

Quand Barack est né, en 1961 à Honolulu, les mariages mixtes étaient interdits dans 16Etats. Le voilà aux portes de la Maison Blanche. "Notre pays ne sera plus jamais le même, écrit le blogueur Oakland Kid sur le site Daily Kos. C'est au monde entier que nous parlons maintenant avec une voix nouvelle. Quelque part au paradis, Martin Luther King, Thomas Jefferson et Walt Whitman doivent sourire."

With the RBC meeting in full swing, I thought it worth revisiting the lies Clinton has told over the last few months.  This diary is based on one I wrote several months ago  As a Floridian, I am personally insulted by the Clinton position on Florida and Michigan.

Let's start with this quote from CNN, dated February 22:

Clinton told Smith that she had promised not to campaign in either state, and had kept her word - but that she had never said she would not ask for the results of those contests to be made official, a request her campaign made public on the eve of Florida's January vote.

Now this is an outright lie.  It isn't subject to debate or misunderstanding.  It's just a lie.  Here is the Washington Post, on October 2007:

About a month ago I wrote about a pattern among late deciders that the exit polls were showing.  As I noted then, Clinton had consistenly won among those who decided in the last 3 days and in the last 24 hours.   Conversely, Obama had consistenly won among those who decided in the last week.  Here is the data updated to show that Clinton continued winning late deciders in Pennsylvania:

However, it is critical to note that this relationship DOES NOT HOLD FOR STATES BELOW THE MASON DIXON as this table shows:

Pay particular attention to the average for the last 72 hours.  

All of this is of obvious significance given the primaries in Indiana and North Carolina.  As I will show on the flip, the last 4 days differ signficantly from any pre-primary week in this cycle.   Before this week, Obama has tended to close on Clinton in polling.   But this week in both North Carolina and Indiana it has been Clinton who has been gaining....

A fundamental concern with the current nomination fight is the lack of an obvious exit strategy.  How, and when exactly, is this race going to end?  Interestingly, though,  I  think this race is much closer to ending than is widely thought.   The Clinton campaign has, in its desperation, argued that the popular vote should be the standard for evaluating who should win the nomination.  As I have written previously, I think this is absolutely the wrong standard to apply.  Pledged delegates is clearly the correct standard.  But if you examine the remaining contests it is becoming increasingly obvious that Obama is in position to claim a popular vote victory on May 6th.  

The table below shows the current popular vote and my projections for the remaining contests.  I have used the realclearpolitics calculations to estimate the popular vote in the caucus states that did not report popular vote totals.    Right now Obama holds an 827 thousand vote lead without Florida, or a 539 thousand vote lead if you include Florida.  For Clinton netting at least enough votes in the remaining contests to take the lead in the popular vote is a pre-requisite for making any reasonable claim for the nomination.    

A great poet once wrote:

THEY must to keep their certainty accuse

All that are different of a base intent;

Pull down established honour; hawk for news

Whatever their loose fantasy invent

So what are the wages of  circular firing squads?

I know something about primary history.  On Friday I will post a review of National Polling from 1972 to 2004 at Openleft.  Here is one fact I have found in my work:

No one with an approval rating under 40 at this point in the cycle has ever won a two way race.

This is a diary written in absolute frustration.  As a Floridian, I cannot take the lies Hillary is telling about her own position regarding Florida and Michigan.  The press is letting her get away with this: so I am going to document her position in this diary just to make clear how absurd her position is.

Let's start with this quote from CNN, dated February 22:

Clinton told Smith that she had promised not to campaign in either state, and had kept her word - but that she had never said she would not ask for the results of those contests to be made official, a request her campaign made public on the eve of Florida's January vote.

With Multiple Polling Diaries on Ohio this morning, I thought I would try and summarize them.  

If you throw out Zogby (I will explain why in a second) and Suffolk the average is Clinton 50.57 and Obama 43.28.  This is a pretty solid lead, and good news for Clinton.  I also think this is terrible news for Democrats: we need this race to be over.  Hopefully Obama will win texas tonight.

Why throw out Zogby?  Two reasons:

1.  His record has been terrible

2.  His cross tabs don't make sense.  Zogby finds Clinton leading by only 9 among woman.  Cross tabs in the other polls show Clinton up at least 15 among woman in Ohio.

Why throw out Suffolk? The cross tabs of that poll make even less sense than the Zogby Poll.  Suffolk too has a horrible track record.

For the first time, Obama has taken a significant lead over Clinton in National Polling.  
http://rasmussenreports.com/...

Critically, Obama now trails among Whites by only 4, 47-43.  He leads McCain by 6, 46-40 while McCain leads Clinton by 46-42.

Perhaps equally important given the upcoming Texas primary, Obama now trails Clinton by only 10 among voters of other racial and ethnic groups (primarily Latinos).

This is the first time since 1976 that a front runner has lost the national lead after winning New Hampshire.  

Yesterday I documented the early evidence about Obama's bounce out of SC and the Kennedy endorsement.  

The table below includes data from substantially more states, and documents the extent of the bounce.  The Obama bounce can be found pretty much everywhere, and is pretty consistent.  

Before the South Carolina primary I was skeptical that it would have much impact on the February 5th States.  We now have enough data to test how big of a bounce Obama is getting out of South Carolina.

The table below compares polling in States taken the week before South Carolina with polls taken after both the South Carolina primary and the Kennedy endorsement.  

A word of caution here: In many of these instances I am comparing polls from different organizations.  Where there were multiple polls last week I took the average. 

CNN just predicted Obama has a "strong win" in SC.

More importantly, CNN sees a "close contest" for second.

An Edwards Second would re-make this race.

Obama wins 81% of the African American vote.

White Vote: Edwards 39, Clinton 36, Obama 24

The big news here is that Edwards is leading Clinton among Whites, and Obama did reasonably well among white.

In June of this year I became increasingly frustrated by the political discussion in blogsphere.  It was all about the National Polls, and how Clinton could not be beaten.  This disappointed me - it was really no different than what you would read in the Washington Post or Time.  It also angered me, because in a way the national polling was being used as a weapon against dissent within the Democratic Party. 

But what really made me mad was that is completely wrong.  I have been involved in Democratic Politics for nearly 30 years, and the one thing I do know is that National Polls are meaningless before New Hampshire.  And yet these polls were being used to create the impression that resistance to Clinton was futile.

The point of the diary is not to say I told you so.  OK, so it isn't the ENTIRE point of this diary.  I am a strong believer that history can provide guidance about how primaries affect each other. 

From Fox News, November 27-29

Clinton 30

Obama 23
Edwards 17
Richardson 12
Biden 3
Kuchinich 3

http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/FOX_

NH_2008_release113007_web.pdf

ARG (not exactly the most reliable pollster) has a poll out today in NH that has Clinton at 34, Obama at 23, Edwards at 17, Richardson at 10, Biden at 3 and Dodd and Kuchinich at 2 each.  ARG also has numbers for SC and Iowa.  

The Fox News Pollster (if such a person could ever be trusted) says "We seem to be seeing a softening in the Clinton vote everywhere," said Opinion Dynamics CEO John Gorman. "The inevitability of a month ago has been replaced by serious sound thoughts. What’s interesting is that this seems to be not a surge to second place Obama, but reexamination of candidates even farther down the list. Edwards is closer to Obama than Obama to Clinton and Richardson closer to Edwards than Edward to Obama. An Edwards second or a Richardson third might shake things up as much as a Hillary defeat"

Suffolk University is out with a New Hampshire Poll which is as follows: