Is Pennsylvania Narrowing?
Posted Oct 29, 2008 at 12:32 PM by Maurice Berger
While Obama's polling average lead in Pennsylvania is over +10%, two new polls are actually reporting the race narrowing in the Keystone State. Rasmussen reports that Obama's advantage is down to +7%, 53% to 46%. Strategic Vision also reports a +7% lead, 50% to 43%. Still, the Democrat's lead is these polls suggests they "Lean Democrat," at the very least, though the state continues to be listed as "Safe Democrat" on Today's and Tomorrow's Maps. (The freshest polling from the state--Associated Press/GfK, Quinnipiac, and Franklin and Marshall--this morning also suggests that the fundamentals in the state favor Obama, he leads by +12% in the first two polls, 13% in the latter.) Yet, as the Boston Globe reports, "Obama's repeated visits here--he held rallies in Chester, outside Philadelphia, yesterday, and in Pittsburgh the night before-- suggest that his campaign is worried enough about the state, which he lost handily in the primary to Senator Hillary Clinton, to maintain a major presence this close to Election Day. One of Obama's top surrogates here, Governor Ed Rendell, said yesterday that McCain's heavy campaigning in the state, especially in southwestern counties around Pittsburgh, was whittling away Obama's lead. 'I never thought it was a 10-plus lead to begin with," Rendell said in an interview. "This is still not a given.'" The big question: are the campaigns' internal polls indicating a much closer race, as some suspect, or is the Obama campaign faking out McCain into pouring money, time, and resources into a state he cannot win? Even more dramatically: are the internal numbers in PA early harbingers of a "Bradley effect," in which white voters tell pollsters they are voting for the black candidate out of embarrassment or a sense of duty, even though they intend to vote for his white opponent in the privacy of the voting booth?
