If the latest polls have you biting your fingernails, I have something to cheer you up. The Rocky Mountain Poll has both president and the Democrats’ senate candidate up in Arizona.
After trailing Mitt Romney by as much as eight points in the days immediately following the Presidential debate, the President is now in a statistical tie with Romney in Arizona both as regards the overall electorate and among those mostly likely to cast ballots. While Obama leads Romney by two points in the race for President, the gap is within the study’s margin of error and basically means they are in a dead heat.
In the U.S. Senate race, Democrat Richard Carmona has a four point lead over Republican Jeff Flake, which again indicates a dead even race, since the vote gap is within the margin of error of the survey. Thus it must be concluded that Arizona is definitely a battleground state for both the Presidential and the U.S. Senate races and there can be little doubt but that the outcome will be largely dependent on which political party does the best job in turning out its voters and whether the Democrats can hang onto the Latino vote.
Hey, I am just trying to keep you sane. Do you need more good news? How about this from Pubic Policy Polling?
PPP’s newest Ohio poll finds Barack Obama leading 51-46, a 5 point lead not too different from our last poll two weeks ago when he led 49-45.
The key finding on this poll may be how the early voters are breaking out. 19% of people say they’ve already cast their ballots and they report having voted for Obama by a 76-24 margin. Romney has a 51-45 advantage with those who haven’t voted yet, but the numbers make it clear that he already has a lot of ground to make up in the final three weeks before the election.
We’ve found a major improvement in Mitt Romney’s image in most of the states that we’ve polled since the Presidential debate, but Ohio is an exception. His favorability now is a 45/51 spread, showing no improvement from his 45/49 breakdown two weeks ago. Obama meanwhile has seen a small spike in his approval rating, from 48/49 to 50/48.
No wonder the Republican Secretary of State in Ohio has been doing everything he can to discourage early voting.
