I've been moving at about half-speed for a number of reasons, but there
are a couple of polls that have trickled in this weekend. In Rhode
Island, Obama leads by 24 according to Rasmussen's first poll of the state. No surprise there. But in Georgia, InsiderAdvantage
has John McCain ahead by only 2 points, 46-44, with 4 percent of the
vote going to Bob Barr. This is consistent with an InsiderAdvantage
poll released two weeks ago that had McCain ahead by 1. But it's
inconsistent with other polling of the state, all of which has shown
the state within a fairly narrow, 8-10 point range.
I
can't scrutinize the internals on the InsiderAdvantage poll because
they haven't provided them. Nor for that matter did Rasmussen (which
showed McCain with a 10-point lead) break its results down by race. But
here is a little bit of a hint -- Rasmussen had Obama trailing 65-32
among Georgians who attend church weekly, and since African-Americans
are quite churchgoing in the South, that must mean that he's getting
absolutely clobbered with the white persons in this category. There are
probably fewer true swing voters in Georgia than in almost any other
state, and while Obama has a floor on his numbers that is better than
the Democrats have done recently, he probably also has a ceiling.
The
Obama campaign's argument, of course, is that it doesn't need swing
voters: it just needs to turn out the black vote. But it's not clear
that there's a ton of room for improvement. In 2004, African-Americans
made up 27.2 percent of Georgia's voting-age citizen population, versus
27.4 percent of its registered voters, and 27.6 percent of people who
actually voted (all this data is taken from the US Census Bureau
-- exit polling showed a slightly lower share of African-Americans
voting in Georgia, about 25 percent).
Georgia is unusual for having not
only a substantial black population, but also an especially
well-educated and upwardly-mobile black population, and it is entirely
plausible that African-Americans voters will turn out in greater
proportion than their white counterparts. But I don't see Obama
improving his standing with white evangelicals enough to win. Both
foreign policy conservatives and fiscal conservatives can probably find
enough to like about Obama to consider voting for him. But for
religious conservatives, who are voting on a series of issues on which
less nuance is possible, I'm not sure that's the case. Sure, you can be
for publicly-financed faith-based initiatives and also for gay marriage
remaining legal in California, but I don't think the two things cancel
out in the same way that you can moderate your position on NAFTA or be
hawkish on some elements of national security.
The 50-state Strategy, as well as the nation's changing demographics and the
problems in Iraq and with the economy, are slowly beginning to
neutralize these issues even in the Deep South, which is why Obama
might lose Georgia by 6 or 8 or 10 points rather than John Kerry's 16.
Even so, Southern religious conservatives remain the voters that
Republicans are most used to reaching out to -- including McCain's
chief strategist, who used to do work
with the Jesse Helms campaign. Change is inevitable, but it's going to
hit Virginia before it hits the Carolinas, and the Carolinas before it
hits Georgia.
--Nate Silver