What's Up With West Virginia?
Several weeks before last May's West Virginia primary, most of us political analysts who think we know everything had already written the script for the coming six months in the Mountain State. First Hillary would win a landslide pyrrhic victory in the West Virginia primary before inevitably losing the nomination to Obama, and then John McCain would go on to win the state in November by a bare minimum of 20 points, driven almost exclusively by abject racism. Some dime-store pundits even predicted West Virginia would prove to be Obama's worst state in the general election. I knew better than that, but those paying attention to my predictions early last summer may recall I predicted a McCain victory over Obama somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 points in West Virginia. The Obama campaign, which rather arrogantly snubbed West Virginia rather than lobbying for their votes in the primary back in May, must have felt the same as they withdrew all resources from the state immediately after the primary drubbing, accepting the storyline that it was a lost cause.
There's just one problem with all these conclusions about Obama's certain uncompetitiveness in the Mountain State....people forgot to ask the voters of West Virginia what they thought. After nearly three months without a poll, an early September poll emerged showing a five-point race. It certainly must have awoken the Obama campaign from its slumber as they reallocated a few resources out of the lost cause of Georgia and invested in a few ad buys in West Virginia. Still, the smart money was that the poll was an outlier and that future polls would certainly negate those numbers and show McCain comfortably ahead.
Again, conventional wisdom was wrong. There have been three polls in the last two weeks in West Virginia, all within single digits and two of them showing McCain with leads of only four percentage points. Suddenly, the national maps are showing West Virginia colored pink instead of crimson red, and it may yet emerge as a swing state despite the Obama campaign's rather insulting invisibility and a deluge of very insulting rhetoric directed towards the state by Obama supporters who didn't like the outcome of the May primary.
By no means am I predicting an Obama victory in West Virginia. In fact, the polls there today are similar to what John Kerry's numbers were four years ago, and Kerry ended up losing by 13 points when nearly every independent voter broke for Bush. I expect the same to happen this year, and a double-digit McCain victory on election night, but I'm struck that the numbers are not considerably worse....so struck in fact that it has forced me to challenge numerous other theories I've been applying to the state of the race in that part of the country.
West Virginia is the only American state that is entirely within Applachia. As we all know, Obama got destroyed throughout Appalachia in the primaries....from southern New York all the way down to northeastern Mississippi. But are those same huge deficits applying to the general election against McCain? There's anecdotal evidence that it is in some parts of Appalachia. Polls in Kentucky and Tennessee, for instance, consistently show Obama underperforming John Kerry, which is no easy task considering Kerry lost Kentucky by 20 points and Tennessee by 14 points. And the Obama campaign has publicly expressed gloominess about its chances in southwestern Pennsylvania outside of Pittsburgh, but then again they were probably just as gloomy about West Virginia until several polls showed things weren't nearly as bad as most probably expected.
But does it make sense that right in the heart of Appalachia in West Virginia, Obama would be pulling in an acceptable level of losses even though he's getting crushed in the rest of the region? It doesn't to me....and makes me wonder if my past assumption of Obama underperforming Kerry by 10 points in southern Ohio and southwestern Pennsylvania was erroneous. I hope I'm not the only one coming to this conclusion, as it heightens the importance of Obama amping up its ground game in places like Portsmouth, Steubenville, and Chillicothe in Ohio, and Washington, Uniontown, and Johnstown in Pennsylvania. If Obama can merely manage to pull in the same margins of defeat and/or narrow victory that John Kerry did in places like this, his chances of making up the difference in other regions of Ohio and Pennsylania (and Virginia for that matter) will be quite good.
There's just one problem with all these conclusions about Obama's certain uncompetitiveness in the Mountain State....people forgot to ask the voters of West Virginia what they thought. After nearly three months without a poll, an early September poll emerged showing a five-point race. It certainly must have awoken the Obama campaign from its slumber as they reallocated a few resources out of the lost cause of Georgia and invested in a few ad buys in West Virginia. Still, the smart money was that the poll was an outlier and that future polls would certainly negate those numbers and show McCain comfortably ahead.
Again, conventional wisdom was wrong. There have been three polls in the last two weeks in West Virginia, all within single digits and two of them showing McCain with leads of only four percentage points. Suddenly, the national maps are showing West Virginia colored pink instead of crimson red, and it may yet emerge as a swing state despite the Obama campaign's rather insulting invisibility and a deluge of very insulting rhetoric directed towards the state by Obama supporters who didn't like the outcome of the May primary.
By no means am I predicting an Obama victory in West Virginia. In fact, the polls there today are similar to what John Kerry's numbers were four years ago, and Kerry ended up losing by 13 points when nearly every independent voter broke for Bush. I expect the same to happen this year, and a double-digit McCain victory on election night, but I'm struck that the numbers are not considerably worse....so struck in fact that it has forced me to challenge numerous other theories I've been applying to the state of the race in that part of the country.
West Virginia is the only American state that is entirely within Applachia. As we all know, Obama got destroyed throughout Appalachia in the primaries....from southern New York all the way down to northeastern Mississippi. But are those same huge deficits applying to the general election against McCain? There's anecdotal evidence that it is in some parts of Appalachia. Polls in Kentucky and Tennessee, for instance, consistently show Obama underperforming John Kerry, which is no easy task considering Kerry lost Kentucky by 20 points and Tennessee by 14 points. And the Obama campaign has publicly expressed gloominess about its chances in southwestern Pennsylvania outside of Pittsburgh, but then again they were probably just as gloomy about West Virginia until several polls showed things weren't nearly as bad as most probably expected.
But does it make sense that right in the heart of Appalachia in West Virginia, Obama would be pulling in an acceptable level of losses even though he's getting crushed in the rest of the region? It doesn't to me....and makes me wonder if my past assumption of Obama underperforming Kerry by 10 points in southern Ohio and southwestern Pennsylvania was erroneous. I hope I'm not the only one coming to this conclusion, as it heightens the importance of Obama amping up its ground game in places like Portsmouth, Steubenville, and Chillicothe in Ohio, and Washington, Uniontown, and Johnstown in Pennsylvania. If Obama can merely manage to pull in the same margins of defeat and/or narrow victory that John Kerry did in places like this, his chances of making up the difference in other regions of Ohio and Pennsylania (and Virginia for that matter) will be quite good.
posted by Mark at 7:15 PM
3 Comments:
I am thinking that Obama probably loses West Virginia by something like a 53%-45% margin. I now believe that Obama is probably safe in Pennsylvania and is leading in Ohio, although his lead right now is coming from two polls that I think were outliers(Quinnipiac and Columbus Dispatch).
Another state that im not sure about in this region is Virginia. The CNN poll putting Obama up 53%-44% is clearly an outlier, but Mason Dixon(who nailed the 2006 Senate race here), has McCain leading 48%-45%.
Who do you think wins both of these states in the end Mark? If McCain can get the kind of late surge that Bush got in 2004, McCain can probably win both of these states.
The race has certainly changed in a very beneficial way for Obama, but I think he peaked too early. There is still a month to go and with the worst headlines of the financial crisis behind us, it's essentially a new day for the McCain campaign....and they have ample ammunition to lob at Obama. It's likely that something will stick, be it the Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright resuscitations or the possible revelation of the Michelle Obama whitey tape.
And there may be a more traditional October surprise. Osama bin Laden helped re-elect Bush in 2004 with his weekend-before-the-election tape, and it's very likely that either a tape or another terrorist attack will unfold before the 2008 election as well. Or perhaps a heightened insurgency in Iraq that puts that back in the headlines. The fallout of more bloodshed in Iraq could help Obama (but not definitely) but anything involving Osama bin Laden or a terrorist attack would help John McCain.
And then of course there's the Bradley effect (or even more specifically, the Bradley/Wilder/Gant/Kirk effect which is almost certain to cost Obama some points in the very states you cited (OH and PA). The media is far too premature is citing McCain's on the cusp of losing thing. I continue to believe he has the advantage, albeit not the 90% advantage I cited last month.
I hope you are wrong about a late surge for McCain. An October surprise can work both ways, with Palin lots of bad news is possible. Many have already voted.
Post a Comment
<< Home