Sizing Up The General Election State-By-State
SurveyUSA released an avalanche of polls the other day matching up John McCain against Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama state-by-state, so we’re just digesting all of these now.
In every state, the economy is cited as the top issue – as it is in national polls – and in nearly all of these polls, Obama and Clinton best McCain on this subject. The same is true when it comes to Iraq which is usually the runner-up among most important issues. McCain trounces both Clinton and Obama by huge margins among voters who care most about fighting terrorism, but the number of voters who cite that as the top issue are most often in single digits in the samples. In some states, McCain is faring significantly better against Obama than Clinton among Hispanic voters, although Obama’s leads are still sizable. Generally, McCain does poorly in these polls among voters in the 18-to-34 age group, although the results for other age groups are more mixed.
All of these surveys were conducted March 14-16. We’ll start off with some of the big ones – California, New York and Virginia – and then, as a bonus, add the state surveys by SurveyUSA and other pollsters that we’ve been tracking. Find it all on the jump page