Electoral Maps: Obama v. McCain / Clinton v. McCain

Time for change

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Tue Mar-18-08 09:15 PM
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Electoral Maps: Obama v. McCain / Clinton v. McCain

Edited on Tue Mar-18-08 10:07 PM by Time for change

National polls comparing Democratic vs. Republican candidates for the 2008 Presidential election have consistently shown Obama doing better than Clinton against Republican candidates (and Edwards doing better than either of them), including McCain. I recently found two poll analyses of the electoral breakdown for the two Democratic candidates against McCain.

Survey USA – March 6th

Superficially, the Survey USA electoral map shows both Obama and Clinton beating McCain, with Obama doing only slightly better than Clinton:

Obama v. McCain – Obama wins 280 to 258

Obama gains from 2004:
Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, North Dakota, Iowa, Ohio, Virginia

Obama losses from 2004
Pennsylvania, New Jersey

Clinton v. McCain – Clinton wins 278 to 260

Clinton gains from 2004
Ohio, Florida, New Mexico, Arkansas, West Virginia

Clinton losses from 2004
Washington, Oregon, Michigan, New Hampshire

Actually this favors Obama much more than a superficial look indicates
First, Obama’s performance compared to Clinton’s is much better than it looks at first glance, because many of the states indicated on the two maps are tossups, which were indicated as going to the candidate with a very lead. When tossup states (5 points or less) are excluded from the analysis, Obama beats McCain 229-123, while Clinton beats McCain only by 203-201.

Secondly, these polls were taken of registered voters rather than of “likely voters”, which is more commonly used and generally considered more reliable. Normally, Republicans do better with “likely voters” than with registered voters, since a higher percentage of their registered voters usually turn out on Election Day. However, this year promises to be very different if you take seriously and consider important the fact that Democrats have consistently turned out for the primaries this year in hugely greater numbers than Republicans.

Hominid Views collection of polls

This electoral map is a collection of the most recent reputable polls for each state, as discussed here. This was published on March 7th. This analysis shows Obama doing substantially better than the Survey USA map and Clinton doing substantially worse:

Obama v. McCain – Obama wins 309 to 229

Obama gains from 2004
Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, North Dakota, Iowa, Ohio, Virginia

Obama losses from 2004
None

Clinton v. McCain – McCain wins 303-235

Clinton gains from 2004
Ohio, Arkansas, West Virginia, Missouri

Clinton losses from 2004
Washington, Oregon, Michigan (tossup), New Hampshire, Wisconsin

Final comments

One reason that it is important to look at polls of head to head competition against McCain at this time is that they can be useful (and rightly so) for the super delegates to consider in making their decision on who to vote for. Certainly electability should be one important consideration.

And these polls don’t take into account Obama’s money advantage due to his record fundraising, which shows no signs of abating, with another $55 million raised in February 2008.

It is also important to note that Obama’s fundraising has come very disproportionately from small donors, averaging only $109 per donor:

And that brings up another very important point:

Obama will arrive without any need to curry favor with Big Oil, Big Media, Labor, or any of the other significant fundraisers who have historically helped to propel candidates into office and then showed up to collect on their investments.