For the Democrats, it must feel like 2000 all over again. A day after
Quinnipiac and American Research Group showed Barack Obama with his
first leads in Florida, Rasmussen
finds him still 8 points behind. That's a slight improvement for Obama from
Rasmussen's last poll of the state, which had him trailing by 10
points, but obviously a long way from something that would get the job
done in November.
We talked a little bit yesterday about the differences in accounting for party identification
between the different pollsters. Those differences seem as though
they're particularly large in Florida, where Rasmussen has consistently
had Obama way down, but Quinnipiac more competitive.
At the end
of the day, however, what matters is not so much the Florida result in
the abstract, but where it stands relative to other states. Our model
calls Florida a toss-up -- but it's also giving Obama credit for about
a 5 point lead nationally. If the election tightens, is Florida still a
state in which he wants to invest resources? Were I running his
campaign, I'd commission some internal polling of the state, as Florida
is so resource-intensive that a decision may need to be made on it
relatively early.
That's about it insofar as the polling goes
today. Rasmuseen's national tracker still has Obama ahead by 3 points;
Gallup will not be releasing numbers today. Economist/YouGov
also has some national numbers out that I'd failed to be mindful of;
Obama leads by 3 points in their poll conducted this week, and led by 4
last week, after having trailed in most of The Economist's polling
throughout the month of May.
--Nate Silver