The Clinton "Big State" Myth Volume #2: New State-by-State Data Confirms that Obama Remains the Strongest Candidate in November

New survey data demonstrates in detail why Clinton's "big state" primary wins mean nothing when it comes to victory in the general election.

SurveyUSA has just released state-by-state results of a 30,000 respondent nation wide survey comparing Barack Obama's and Hillary Clinton's chances against John McCain.

Bottom line: this data shows that Obama has the best chance to defeat McCain. In the simulated match-ups he beats McCain 280 to 258 electoral votes nationwide, and is very close in several additional key states that could significantly boost his margin of victory.

Clinton beats McCain by 276 to 262 nationwide. But her margins in several key states are much thinner than Obama's and on balance, Obama substantially increases the number of states in play.

A couple of key results:

* Contrary to the "only Clinton can win big states" myth, Obama does exactly as well in Ohio against McCain as does Clinton. Each currently wins the state by 50% to 40%.

* Even though Obama lost the primary in California to Clinton, he polls 1% stronger in the general election survey than Clinton does against McCain.

* Obama wins nine states in the simulation that Hillary loses: Colorado, Nevada, Washington, Oregon, Virginia, Iowa, North Dakota, New Hampshire. He also wins several electoral votes from Nebraska, which allocates delegates by congressional district.

* Hillary wins five states in the simulation that Obama loses: West Virginia, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Florida. But three of these five are heavily in play. In New Jersey he loses to McCain by less than one point in the poll. And in Florida, Obama polls within the margin of error (of four percentage points), losing the simulation 47% to 45%. The simulation shows him losing to McCain in Pennsylvania by 42% to 47%. Hillary wins 47% to 46% for McCain. But remember that Hillary is very well known in Pennsylvania and Obama is just beginning to campaign there.

* Clinton actually loses the big state of Michigan in the simulation. Obama wins.

* Hillary's performance in many key states is much weaker than Obama's. In Colorado, Obama polls eight points stronger than Clinton. He polls nine points stronger in Iowa, five points stronger in New Hampshire, eight in Washington, six in Oregon, seven in Virginia, 12 in Nebraska, three in New Mexico.

* And, of course, the survey does not reflect either the fact that Obama does better as people get to know him, or that his inspirational style expands the electorate through the participation by brand new motivated voters.

* In fact, If Obama overcame small deficits in Florida and New Jersey he would clobber McCain 322 to 216 electoral votes.

If the Clinton campaign is going to convince "superdelegates" to swing her way, these survey results show that they're going to have to come up with rationale other than "electability."

Robert Creamer is a long time political organizer and strategist and author of the recent book: Stand Up Straight. How Progressives Can Win, available on Amazon.com.

Comments

[mburkel]

"* Even though Obama lost the primary in California to Clinton, he polls 1% stronger in the general election survey than Clinton does against McCain."

Is this the same type of polling that gave Obama a 14% lead in California, only to have Hillary win by 9%? Zogby claimed the biggest flaw was the undercounting of the Hispanic vote. McCain has said he's going after California and will no doubt get help from the 'terminator'. He's also very popular with Hispanics, the largest minority in California. If McCain can sell himself as a social moderate in California and have the Republican Party get out their base with socially conservative voter initiatives, the race could easily be decided by winning the Hispanic vote. If the Republicans can paint Obama as only concerned with the black minority that has voted heavily in his favor, I could see the Hispanics turning to McCain or not voting. Losing California is obviously a showstopper for the Democrats. Clearly there is a lot to play out before November.

[MBryant]

The fact is - the Dems will likely win the big states anyway (except Texas and maybe Florida). Obama has been winning a lot of smaller states. He stands a better chance of taking Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Maine, and more from McCain or at least making McCain fight for those states. Do you think McCain will spend and campaign in Colorado if Hillary Clinton is the candidate? Further, Obama has convinced many black voters that he is viable and they are turning to him in impressive numbers. If Huckabee Republican voters stay home and Obama can turn out blacks in the south - Obama could bring North and South Carolina and perhaps even Georgia into the blue fold. The polls aren't showing this yet - but it could happen.

Hillary Clinton is strong in traditional blue states and with hispanics in the Southwest. In the fall, the Dems won't need those traditional blue states - they'll get them anyway - and taking Texas from John McCain will be a hard fight that Clinton may try, but Obama won't need.

[bish66]

What a lot of bull!

The at least last 8 (!!!) years have clearly shown that polls are useless! Remember the utter amazement about the 2004 results? CNN, FoxNews and others apologized for the poor quality of their polls!
And if that is too long ago for you to remember, just remember the New Hampshire results where polls suggested that Obama would beat Clinton easily...
Remember the poll results that favored Clinton with huge margins in Texas and Ohio.

One false move can turn the election around: a huge gaffe, a stupid comment, a yawn at the wrong time. And compare 2 or 3 different polls and you will get different results, all of them wrong.

[izforever]

Given two strong candidates and a serious possibility that McCain could win in November, electability is everything.

And: It's the turnout, stupid.

Why do you think McCain's going after Obama with everything he's got?

Hillary: "a one-woman solution to the Republicans' problems"

Hillary will turn out Republicans in droves. Dobson and Limbaugh said they'd stay home of McCain is the nominee. You can be damn sure they won't stay home if Hillary's the nominee.

On the latest, from Survey USA: "These are not surveys of likely voters, these are surveys of registered voters."

The Economist says it plain and simple, yet again, in their article on McCain:

"If Democrats were to deprive Mr McCain of the chance of running against Hillary Clinton, that would be the cruellest blow. Mrs Clinton would be a one-woman solution to the Republicans' problems, a guarantee that money will flow into the party's coffers and that true-red voters will troop to the polls."

They said it months ago, in their article on the Clintons:

"If what should be a cakewalk in November turns into a rout, the Democrats will know who to blame."

Steve
http:/trueconservative.typepad.com

[Shannon2008]

This is good stuff. The big state argument is only good if you want to keep the same 50-50 electoral college map and possibly loose to the Republicans every election cycle.

[Parkhurst]

Yawn . . . what utter bull. Obama carried states that are irrelevant to democratic hopes in the fall. Did the writer of this tripe actually look at the data and the plethora of caveats from surveyUSA - no? I didn't think so. How do people like Robert Creamer, clearly incompetent, get away with this hackery?

First red flag should be that this was a poll or series of polls of registered voters, not likely voters. Do you know the kind of inaccuracy that introduces - no? I didn't think so. This sort of buffoonery should be an embarrassment to any journalist and to any half-way serious journal, fit to read.

I think what gets me most is the dribbling inadequacy of huffPo "journalists". They simply, for the most part, don't even care that they don't have a clue. This is a painfully stupid article.

Below is a small snippet from the actual surveyUSA presentation . . .

"There are specific limitations to this exercise. The winner"s margin in each state is not always outside of the survey"s margin of sampling error. Rather than show states where the results are inside of the margin of sampling error as "leaning" or "toss-ups," SurveyUSA for this illustration assigned Electoral Votes to the candidate with the larger share of the vote, no matter how small the winner"s margin. The Democratic nominee is not yet known. Running mates on neither side are known. These are not surveys of likely voters, these are surveys of registered voters. Those caveats stated, the exercise is a remarkable foreshadowing of how contested, and how fiercely fought, the general election in November may be, regardless of who the Democratic nominee is. And the exercise speaks to which states may vote one way or the other, depending on who the Democrats nominate."

[Herrington]

It is a first pass, more detail will come. And while technically, registered voters do not equate with likely voters, the differences are in low single digits and will be less in a campaign of as much interest as this. Now that McCain has clinched, this type of polling can begin. An actual nominee from the Democrats will make polls clearer still, but as a tool for selecting the right nominee, ignore this and following, more scientific polls that take longer, at your peril.

"SurveyUSA for this illustration assigned Electoral Votes to the candidate with the larger share of the vote, no matter how small the winner"s margin"

Um, that is how the electoral votes are assigned. the general election is winner take all by state execpt in Nebraska.

[RichLiberal]

Your polls are useless compared to the actual vote data that has been tallied in these states. You had a poll that said Obama was going to win NH by 10 points. You had a poll released on Super Tuesday that said Obama had a double digit lead in California.

Now you have polls saying that Obama and Hillary do equally well in Ohio. Hello, they just had a vote in Ohio 4 days ago. Obama got clobbered by Hillary or didn't you notice.

Here's some more big state data that the Super-Delegates should take into consideration: Texas is a big state where nearly 3 million voters cast ballots and Hillary won by 100,000 votes.

Now on the same day Texas ran a caucus right after the regular vote and guess what: Obama people swamped the caucuses and turned around the delegate count.

What do we make of this? It is clear: caucuses are some other form of voting than the voting we do here in the United States. Unlike the Constitutional type of voting that people do when they go to the ballot box, some people invented this caucus voting thing that has no Constitutional basis whatever. And there are very good reasons why not.

THEREFORE, THE SUPER-DELEGATES SHOULD THROW OUT ALL THE CAUCUS RESULTS BECAUSE THEY HAVE NO BEARING ON THE CONSTITUTIONAL PROCESS OF VOTING AND SELECTING OUR LEADERS.

After throwing out the caucus results, then you can divide up the affected delegates 50-50 and then things will be set right. And you might even have a better understanding of the reality behind what you call the "big state myth".

[Shannon2008]

"THEREFORE, THE SUPER-DELEGATES SHOULD THROW OUT ALL THE CAUCUS RESULTS BECAUSE THEY HAVE NO BEARING ON THE CONSTITUTIONAL PROCESS OF VOTING AND SELECTING OUR LEADERS. "

Maybe they should throw out the results of the pas 40+ presidential elections, were caucuses were used to determine each parties nominee. Nah. -- we can't do that.

LET'S JUST THROW THE CANDIDATE WITH THE FEWEST PLEDGED DELEGATES OUT AFTER THE PUERTO RICO CAUCUS (WHICH MAY NOW BE A WINNER TAKE ALL PRIMARY THANKS TO THE RULE CHANGING NEOCONS OVER IN THE CLINTON CAMPAIGN)!!

[Herrington]

So 3 state polls out 41 were off by the published margin of error. I think guesswork like that is more dependable than just wishing. 3 out of 41 translates to 7.3% error. But error cuts both ways. You discount the error in polling where Obama beat Clinton by more than the predicted spread. Overall the polls turn out to be fairly accurate predictors if you know how statistics work. That's why campaigns use them.

In Texas, the super delegate must take into consideration that Rush Limbaugh extolled Republicans to vote for Clinton. The exit poll show a substantially higher participation of Republicans in that primary and a quadrupling of those Republicans voting for Clinton when compared to other contests. The caucuses were closed to Republicans and Independents, and there fore actually better represent the sentiments of the party.

Caucuses represent the will of the party, that is the will of those activists committed enough to go and participate. If you want overhaul the caucus system then you must throw out the super delegates as well, they being super delegate so because they represent the same or greater level of commitment and activism that the caucus goers have.

This is not a question that can be solved by a simplistic solution, especially not one that favors the candidate that is losing under the system as it exists, and by the way tacitly agreed to by Clinton when she announced for office.
.

[Herrington]

Ah, this is what I have been waiting for. Now, the first of the data sets required to move the super delegates is in. A 24 point electoral vote lead with a stronger chance at a very much larger lead due to close margins is a much better place to start from than Clinton's 12 electoral vote lead with troubled margins.

With the California certifications and the Texas caucus results wiping out Clinton's delegate gains, released today, for her VOTR victories, the race is much clearer. True that polling is a dynamic, things change, but gamblers make a living in Las Vegas and in the stock market on much less clear data than this. The betting line on the nomination just doubled for Obama.

[melann830]

Hillary is winning in the democratic blue states. Obama is not. He is winning in the red states. Mc Cain will crush him in those states in November. But Hillary already had some republicans voting for her in Texas and she is demonstrating that she can woo the other party to her side. Therefore, this I believe is the best argument for who should be our president. If the Democrats are not choosing Obama in the Blue States, they won't side with him in November either because they know he isn't seasoned enough to be our president. He should step down. He does not have the support of the democratic states, swing states or the big states. The little states are important, but come election time they won't have the pull of the blue states and they will all go to McCain. The red states are only voting for Obama because they know that it is easier for McCain to beat him than Clinton. That is not a good way for Obama to enter the wihitehouse. The day he enters it should be because of the democratic states.

[XYZ]

Plus Obama's money making organization really would help the DNC, alot.

I thought the dems were politicians, and don't they sniff out money. Obama also out raises hillary by 15-20 percent, wouldn't that help elect other dems?? Come on people wake up the Clinton campain is now in fairy tale mode.

[nik12]

I would just like to point out the silliness of the poll that Mr. Creamer relies on.

Who in their right mind actually thinks that the same Democratic candidate who cannot win States like Pennsylvania and New Jersey will somehow win States like Virginia and North Dakota who have not voted Democrat since 1964.

This is not to say Obama won't do better than Clinton against McCain, but do not look to this poll as evidence of that belief; the poll makes no sense.

[Herrington]

Actually, the demographics have changed to more upscale voters in many places, putting more states in play for the right candidate. More polls will be needed of course, but scientific guesswork is always better than unadulterated guesswork. In the computer biz we used to call it SWAG (scientific wild assed guess).

[braveryexists]

I appreciate the fact that these polls legitimately do poke a significant hole in Clinton's electability argument, but they tell us approximately nothing about how an election that's taking place eight months from now is actually going to turn out. Remember all those polls that said Hillary Clinton was a mortal lock for the Democratic nomination? Or the ones claiming that Rudy Giuliani would win the Republican nod because of his name recognition? Or the ones that said Fred Thompson would completely change the dynamic of the Republican primary?

The take-home lesson of this campaign so far is that no one can predict the future, period.

[AnninCA]

Good point.....

[XYZ]

Yeah but the republicans, ticket is punched, they punched the ticket home with this impending train wreck of an economy, and recession. Don't worry it's coming to your neighborhood. There are 3 abandoned houses on my street alone.

[soulstressed]

Please sign this petition: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/Truth_Hurts/

[poppaculture]

Independents are KEY to winning in November. -- They've been lied to by Republicans for eight years. -- They will vote for Obama (his opt-in, NON-MANDATORY, health care plan is one example of Obama's "sensible" appeal). -- Get smart Democrats. -- The presidential candidate who talks about a hopeful future with Democrats and Republicans and Independents working together is the road to take.

[Seattlelite]

Like many people I have tried to get a grip on just why Hillary would rather lose to McSame than Obama. My first thought was this is a very bitter spiteful women . Then something struck me, perhaps it's a strategy move on her part. if she loses (and she will) to Obama there's a pretty good chance he'll be in office for 8 yrs. But if she loses against McSame well she got another crack in 4 years because he will only be a one term president.

[RethinkingOBAMA]

It's time to rethink Obama. It troubles me that Barack did not hold a single hearing on Afghanistan because he said he was busy running for President. We rather have a politician who has atleast tried to do his or her job. He has failed our troops in Afghanistan and owes our young men an apology. Barrack completely lost me when he used in his speech (after he lost Ohio) the example of an 80 year old man in Uganda who stayed up late to hear the Iowa results as his international appeal. As an immigrant, I know there is a novelty factor about Barrack. But what America needs in these hard times is a leader that is respected by Russia, China, India not a novelty figure.The Pew poll found over 15% of Democrats will cross over to McCain if Obama is the Democratic nominee. The percentage will be much higher among the Asian community.

[Repub4Obama]

Actually, Senator Obama is NOT on the Near East Foreign Services committee. He is on an European committee. It is not his place to hold a hearing on Afghanistan, regardless of what the Clinton campaign says.

Clinton is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which has held three meetings on Afghanistan. She was absent at all three.

Who exactly is not doing their job?

[1dogs2]

It troubles me that you are troubled by Obama not holding a single hearing on Afghanistan in the subcommittee he chairs whose jurisdiction is EUROPEAN AFFAIRS. Since this silly charge came from Clinton as a way to impugn Obama's attention to his Senate duties, however, I'm sure you must be at least as troubled by Clinton's failure to appear at either of the two hearings held by the Foreign Affairs Committee, of which Clinton is a member, on the situation in Afghanistan.

I'm sorry that you couldn't discern Obama's point about the 80-year-old Ugandan who was interested in our primary results. To those of us who are profoundly concerned by the enormous damage to America's reputation in the rest of the world that has resulted from the Bush administration's conduct, the fact that the rest of the world is watching very carefully how this process unfolds is encouraging. Obama's point was only that we all need to be careful how we conduct ourselves during this process because it will affect how we are judged in the rest of the world, which presently views us as international bullies and as hypocites in our pronouncements about the adequacy of democratic processes in other countries. If this election is seen to be contaminated by racism, anti-Muslim bias, dirty political tricks and the like, America's reputation will suffer further damage. If the process is perceived as fair and open, we may begin to be seen as a decent people again.

Our security depends at least in part on reversing the accumulation of enemies, particularly in Muslim nations, that we have acquired during the Bush years, and reversing the contempt with which our present government is regarded even in countries that are our closest allies. The only "novelty" the rest of the world sees in this election is what appears to them to be a rejection by the American people of a politics that belies our expressed ideals. They dare to hope that finally, we are living up to those ideals. A president elected under those circumstances will be respected in every nation. One who is elected by fear-mongering, gutter politics and appeals to our worst, rather than our best, instincts will be regarded as more of what the world has come to expect of us.

[simmern4u]

Get educated please. Sen. Obama chairs a subcommittee (a minor committee to a larger one), that takes up issues like NATO to include Afghanistan. True he was running a successful campaign for the highest office in the country, so was Sen. Clinton and a host of other senators. The committee (the main committee) chair did hold meetings on NATO and Afghanistan, so non-issue. Hillary missed vital meetings too (but she do serve as a chair of a committee or subcommittee) with all her years in the senate, so what's your point. We all can find a poll to justifity our distaste of a candidate, so what's your point. The Clintons will distroy this country with all their lies and deceit. McCain is too damn old with Post Traumatic Symdrome (PTSD) from all those years in captivity as a Prisoner of War (POW). His anger, bad temper, and general behavior will destroy this country, remember Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran. The man has some serious issues to be a hands away for a nuclear bomb. So what's your point.

[MikeMidCity]

P.S. Nice troll name.