MT-Mason-Dixon: Obama defeats Clinton easily

[Flying Dog]

Yea, Clinton is likely drawing a lot of her support from Yellowstone County. The county has a lot of working-class folk and service-industry jobs. Should be her best county.

[Flying Dog]

Montana is the fifth poorest state in the nation and is over 90% white. Clearly, Obama has a gigantic working class white problem that will doom him in the general.

Bringing Montana into single digits will sure go a long way to giving Obama the election. In fact, it may net him as many as...0 electoral votes.

But, hey, losing Michigan and Pennsylvania would only amount to 38 EVs lost (58 if you include Ohio as a lost opportunity) so the white working class problem is to be ignored, plain and simple.

Obama is going to win Michigan by a larger margin than Kerry did.

Count on it.
He's strong where it matters. People are paying way to much attention to the fabled Macomb Reagen Democrats while not paying attention to Oakland County which Obama will win handily, easily negating Macomb

[Flying Dog]

Montana is the fifth poorest state in the nation and is over 90% white. Clearly, Obama has a gigantic working class white problem that will doom him in the general.

Bringing Montana into single digits will sure go a long way to giving Obama the election. In fact, it may net him as many as...0 electoral votes.

But, hey, losing Michigan and Pennsylvania would only amount to 38 EVs lost (58 if you include Ohio as a lost opportunity) so the white working class problem is to be ignored, plain and simple.

Obama is going to win Michigan by a larger margin than Kerry did.

Count on it.
He's strong where it matters. People are paying way to much attention to the fabled Macomb Reagen Democrats while not paying attention to Oakland County which Obama will win handily, easily negating Macomb

Actually, I'm paying attention to the polls that are consistently showing Michigan as extremely close.

Verily: Sure, but I doubt the black working class is the source of Obama's problems in MI.

That's the cycle in Michigan. Voters toy around with the Republican in the summer, but by September-October they chicken out.

See DeVos-Granholm race.

[Flying Dog]

I don't knowwhy this would be the case in Michigan, really. Look at the 2006 senate race, for instance. Looking at the Atlas database there were 41 polls conducted in the period from mid-January to early November. Stabenow led in everyone of those. There was also no obvious trending in any direction. Take out Strategic Vision and the last batch of polls were spot on. I see that the gubernatorial race was a good case for the theory that Obama will have an easy time, but again:

I don't think you can use the 2006 senate race as a reasonable comparison. Gore, Kerry or Obama for that matter aren't or weren't incumbents running for reelection against joke candidates.

Gore won it by 6%. Kerry won it by 3%. Is it unreasonable to think that McCain could improve a couple of percent on that? I don't see why Michigan would be safe for Obama.

I don't think anybody is arguing that Michigan is safe for Obama.

 And, in fact, going back to the 2004 presidential, in early June Kerry was getting 47% in 4 polls in a row. No late breaking undecideds there. In fact, only 4 out of 46 polls on the Atlas that year showed Kerry below 45%. So I can't say I'm very convinced.

If Kerry was getting 47%, then it is likely that he was losing independents to Bush in those polls. Since Dems usually will get you about 48% in Michigan. Kerry ended up winning indy's by a 49-47 margin over bush in 04' according to the exits. He was losing indy's in the run-up to the election.