Strategic Vision (R) Pennsylvania General Election
- Barack Obama/Joe Biden 49% (50%)
- John McCain/Sarah Palin 44% (43%)
- Undecided 5%
Favorable / Unfavorable (Net)
- John McCain 49% (48%) / 40% (39%) [+9%]
- Sarah Palin 48% (49%) / 40% (38%) [+8%]
- Barack Obama 49% (48%) / 41% (39%) [+8%]
- Joe Biden 47% (47%) / 39% (37%) [+8%]
Which presidential candidate do you believe would be best able to handle the economy?
- Barack Obama 48% (51%)
- John McCain 44% (42%)
Which presidential candidate do you believe would be best able to handle the war in Iraq?
- John McCain 49% (48%)
- Barack Obama 40% (40%)
Survey of 1,200 likely voters was conducted October 27-29. The margin of error is ±3 percentage points. Results from the poll conducted October 20-22 are in parentheses.
October 31st, 2008 at 9:48 am
Notice Palin Mania.
October 31st, 2008 at 9:54 am
Palin Mania?
October 31st, 2008 at 9:55 am
Notice in all SV polls McCain and Palins fav/unfav are about the same – are the liberal polls asking in a way to get a result ?
October 31st, 2008 at 9:58 am
McCain is truly closing in Pennsylvania. This is great.
October 31st, 2008 at 10:01 am
I think we need to take both Pennsylvania and Virginia to win.
October 31st, 2008 at 10:02 am
OHIO JOE and Adam, we’ll have plenty of time to debate Palin after the election.
October 31st, 2008 at 10:06 am
What did I say?
October 31st, 2008 at 10:07 am
But since I was brought up, I think the tightening has a lot more to do with what Rendell and Murtha said than any sort of “Palin-mania”. Esepcially in areas west of I-81.
October 31st, 2008 at 10:12 am
You had said something the other day. Don’t worry about it though. What did Murtha and Rendell say? I missed that. Also, do you think we have a real chance of carrying the state?
October 31st, 2008 at 10:14 am
You missed Murtha, Clarence? Murtha called his constituents redneck racists.
October 31st, 2008 at 10:14 am
The formula for winning this state would be to clean up in the T area, do better than the average Republican in the Pittsburgh area, and hope that Obama’s lead is due to politically correct suburbanites in places like Bucks county lying to pollsters about their Obama support. Adam probably knows more about the Scranton area.
October 31st, 2008 at 10:16 am
Murtha called people in his district “really redneck” and Rendell says that many older whites in PA just won’t vote for a black man. They both think that Obama will still win in the state though.
My sense is that Obama is going to win the state. He’s got droves of people supporting him in Philly and the Philly burbs. Michael Barone wrote an article talking about how suburbanites abandoned the GOP in droves in 1992 when their property values plummeted and he thinks the same thing is going to happen around Philly. McCain will probably do as well as any Republican in the Northeast and the Western half of the state. But if he gets blown away in the Southeast, it’s just not going to matter.
I say Obama wins PA by about 4 or 4 points.
October 31st, 2008 at 10:17 am
Sarah guaranteed McCain would win PA in the home of Joe Namath. No guts, no glory.
October 31st, 2008 at 10:17 am
4 or 5 points*
October 31st, 2008 at 10:18 am
We don’t need both Pennsylvania and Virginia to win. We do need one of them though. If we win Pennsylvania, it’s game over, McCain/Palin wins because all we’ll need is one of either Colorado, Virginia, New Hampshire, or Nevada to win, and if we can win Pennsylvania, we can surely win one of those more favorable states. If we don’t win Pennsylvania, we need Virginia, Colorado, and Nevada or New Hampshire to win.
I think our chances in Virginia are slightly better than 50/50 at this point. Pennsylvania, maybe 25% chance of winning. Colorado is about 50%. Nevada around 50%. New Hampshire around 10%. I’d put Ohio at about 70% and Florida around 85%. Missouri around 90%. North Carolina around 95% and Indiana around 98%.
October 31st, 2008 at 10:19 am
Kerry won Lackawanna County (Scranton) by about 13 points in 2004. Obama will probably win the county by about half that. Obama will do worse than Kerry in the West. But I bet he overperforms in the Philly burbs.
October 31st, 2008 at 10:23 am
Oh yeah – before I forget. Philly will report it’s vote totals first. So on Election Night, don’t be surprised to see PA show something like 80-20 for Obama immediately after the polls close. The margin will slowly whittle back over a period of hours.
October 31st, 2008 at 10:26 am
I wouldn’t be surprised if McCain wins Scranton, although I agree Obama probably wins it.
October 31st, 2008 at 10:26 am
Isn’t it ironic that OBAMA could have had the exact same positions on issues and run on the Communist party ticket, and yet he may win the Presidency? Let’s pray that he doesn’t.
For those of you who are Christian, or that pray to God, please pray every night and day that we can keep this evil man out of the white house. He would do more harm to the USA than all the other bad Presidents combined. Pray as if everything depended on God, then work as if everything depended on us. When it comes down to it, its going to be about who can turn out the vote. If you have neighbors who usually don’t vote, work to get them their….man phones…drive the elderly…whatever we can do…signs in the yards…bumper stickers….WORK work work
October 31st, 2008 at 10:31 am
I’ll be praying, not for a McCain victory, but that God would raise up good leaders for us and give people wisdom to vote the right way. We can’t be presumptuous to know God’s will, but just pray that His will would be done.
October 31st, 2008 at 10:33 am
Oh yeah – before I forget. Philly will report it’s vote totals first. So on Election Night, don’t be surprised to see PA show something like 80-20 for Obama immediately after the polls close. The margin will slowly whittle back over a period of hours.
Unless the time is extended to account for long lines!
October 31st, 2008 at 10:33 am
IllinoisGuy, are you claiming that God is a Republican?
October 31st, 2008 at 10:36 am
actually, I woul not bet on a huge win by Obama on the Philly suburbs. There is a very large jewish population, and McCain is going to received record levels of support from Jewish American voters.
October 31st, 2008 at 10:36 am
If God is a Republican then, given the impending Obama victory, he must be part of the circular firing squad.
October 31st, 2008 at 10:39 am
Mike,
Here are the net favorability ratings from PA polls that have been released in the past several days. The positive numbers for Palin, specifically, from the Republican pollster appear to be an anomaly.
October 31st, 2008 at 10:41 am
McCain/Palin schedule for today.
October 31, 2008:
9:00 AM ET: Governor Palin Rally (Latrobe, PA)
10:00 AM ET: John McCain Rally (Hanoverton, OH)
12:15 PM ET: John McCain Town Square Stop (Steubenville, OH)
1:45 PM ET: John McCain Town Square Stop (New Philadelphia, OH)
4:00 PM ET: Governor Palin Rally (York, PA)
5:45 PM ET: John McCain and Gov. Schwarzenegger Rally (Columbus, OH)
October 31st, 2008 at 10:41 am
#20, 22 – I don’t believe that God wants us to be a Communist country. I don’t believe he wants us to elect someone who pals around with terrorist, and campaigns for them (Odinga). I don’t believe God wants us to be lead by someone who believes in a church who preaches hatred toward white people. I don’t believe God wants the idle and lazy to reap the harvest of the worker. Do you? So, I have no problem in praying for a McCain victory.
October 31st, 2008 at 10:41 am
Kristofer,
That’s key. Obama’s win in PA is contingent upon overpergorming Kerry in Philly and the burbs. The blacks are going to come out in droves. But $64 question is how that will affect the ethnic white vote in Philadelphia County. That is 700k votes. Kerry won in by an 80-19 margin. If Obama can’t do that and if McCain can (by some stroke of divine intervention) overperform Bush or even maintain Bush-level support in the Philly burbs then he’ll win, because even though Obama will probably still win metro Pittsburgh and Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, he’s going to do worse than Kerry in those urban centers. And he is certainly going to do worse in rural PA, especially west of I-81.
I give McCain about a 1 in 4 chance in PA. We’ll know pretty early how the vote is stacking up. Watch Philadelphia, Berks, Bucks, Montgomery, Lackawanna, Luzerne counties in the east. If Obama can’t match Kerry’s numbers in these 6 counties then he will be in big trouble.
October 31st, 2008 at 10:55 am
Great news… things are really starting to look better for McCain!
McCain is gonna win this thing!
October 31st, 2008 at 11:11 am
#28, good comment, but I have one concern.
With high turn-out we usually get the urban votes late. This is what basically happened through out the primary season. This is why NBC would not call Indiana for Hillary (Gary area), and why Obama came from behind to win in MO.
On the other hand, it appears as if a lot of the early voting is happening in urban areas, so it could be the opposite.
One thing I am trying to understand is; which states count their absentee ballots first and what states leave them until after?
October 31st, 2008 at 11:31 am
I fully expect a lawsuit by the Obama campaign and a judge ordering polls open longer in Philly, so I doubt we see those results early.
October 31st, 2008 at 11:43 am
We’ll see most of the results in Philly early. There might well be some liberal kook judge that keeps the polls open in a few precincts because Democrats suck – but most of Philly’s vote will be in early.
October 31st, 2008 at 11:58 am
Most of the battleground states will not require a judge, will theY. since nearly all have Democratic Governors?
October 31st, 2008 at 12:02 pm
17
“Philly will report it’s vote totals first. So on Election Night, don’t be surprised to see PA show something like 80-20 for Obama immediately after the polls close. The margin will slowly whittle back over a period of hours.”
There is a larger point for all states in regard to when polls close. Whatever Illuminati-type Republican machine politicos are running the polls in heavy McCain districts MUST report their results a few minutes before they close. Get the results in to show McCain with an early lead with 1% of precincts reporting. This is similar to the psychology of McCain being up one nationally in even a fluke poll. That would motivate our side – and theirs – to go out and get people voting.
If Obama is shown at 80-20 with 1-5% of precincts in at 9:30pm EST in places like Virginia, that will be discouraging.
October 31st, 2008 at 2:28 pm
“If Obama is shown at 80-20 with 1-5% of precincts in at 9:30pm EST in places like Virginia, that will be discouraging.”
How so? PA polls close LATER than VA’s… could impact the voters out in CO though.
October 31st, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Sorry, I see your point. But I should point out that VA’s results first come in at 7 PM. If the heavily liberal districts are the first to show, that could have a negative impact in CO, which closes its polls like 2/3 hrs after VA.
October 31st, 2008 at 4:23 pm
All close states will swing toward mccain. when it comes down to it, undecideds will vote for mccain. This is a vote for the presidency for crying out loud!