Battlegrounds: Obama breaking open?
Posted: Thursday, September 25, 2008 9:21 AM by Carrie Dann
Filed Under:
States
New numbers from CNN/Time/Opinion Research show Obama up 51% to 45% among registered voters in Colorado, up from a 5-point deficit for the Illinois senator last month. The Democratic nominee bests McCain in Michigan by 51% to 44% percent among registered voters. And in Pennsylvania, he jumped to a nine point lead, 52% to McCain's 43%.
With Obama posting widened leads in notable battleground states, Politico's Mike Allen writes that "State by state, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill). is showing signs of breaking open a presidential race that looked deadlocked through much of September… This is the first time that one of the candidates has dominated state polls in the most closely contested battlegrounds."
COLORADO: Independent groups are shoveling money into Colorado's contested Senate race at an unprecedented rate. "Leave out the party committee spending, and independent groups allied to the GOP have spent $10.4 million in Colorado, while just $2.6 million in New Hampshire and $2.4 million in Minnesota, the two runners-up, data provided by Democratic media buyers show. (Attack groups supporting Democrats, by comparison, have spent $3.4 million in Colorado, $1.6 million in Minnesota, and $1.2 million in New Hampshire.)"
The Rocky Mountain News reports on yet another voter registration controversy: "Allegations of fraudulent voter registrations in El Paso County have prompted the state Republican Party to begin looking into nearly 500 statewide addresses where 10 or more people have registered. Party volunteers have started checking the list of residences, homeless shelters, nursing homes, rehab centers and college dormitories to confirm registrations are legitimate."
FLORIDA: Another registration-is-overwhelming-elections-boards story out of Florida. The state elections division received 25,000 new registrations in one day this week.
IOWA: Absentee voting begins today in the Hawkeye State. "The general election turnout could reach between 76 percent and 80 percent of Iowa's 2.1 million registered voters, [Secretary of State Michael] Mauro predicted. The record turnout in Iowa was 80.5 percent in 1992 when Bill Clinton defeated George H.W. Bush and Ross Perot."
MICHIGAN: Numbers from a new Michigan poll from Selzer & Co.via the Detroit Free Press: "As Congress wrangles over an expensive Wall Street bailout, 76% of likely Michigan voters say the U.S. economy already is in either a recession or a depression -- including one in four who say the nation is in a depression." More: "Michigan voters are split on whether the government should help the nation's financial institutions, on the heels of the bankruptcy of investment bank Lehman Brothers. Of those surveyed, 43% said the government needs to step in, while 45% said a bailout would only encourage the greed and risk-taking that led to the financial meltdown."
NEW HAMPSHIRE: Gov. Bill Richardson stumped for Obama in the Granite State earlier this week. The New Mexico governor said that while McCain used to be a maverick, "to get the Republican nomination, he's compromised. He's lost his 'maverickness.'"
Your fun ballot fact of the day: "For the first time in 110 years, New Hampshire voters will not be able to make one mark on the ballot to vote a straight ticket for one party or the other."
OHIO: Calls are pouring into Senator Sherrod Brown's office from constituents outraged about the bailout plan.
