Q POLLS: Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania

Quinnipiac out with three new polls this morning for PA, OH, FL which is interesting since they...just released a Florida one last week.
Anywho, on to the registered voter results.
In Ohio, Quinnipiac has Obama jumping out to a 47-38 lead. Usually PPP and Quinnipiac move in similar directions (PPP showed Obama's lead halving in Ohio yesterday), not the case this time. On the Senate side, they have Brown cruising to re-election with a 50-34 lead over Mandel. D/R split in the state for this poll was an odd D+8, which explains much of the large lead (they also have Obama doing well amongst indies and better with men and whites than PPP, Public Policy's release yesterday used a D+2 sample). Who knew using a sample with four times the Democratic registration advantage than another pollster will give Obama favor, eh?

In Florida, Obama leads Romney by 4, 45-41, nearly identical to the individual state release they pushed out last week showing him up by the same margin. However, on the Senate side, they have Bill Nelson barely hanging onto his seat, leading Mack by a scant 41-40. They used a D+3 sample in the state, same as their singular poll last week.

In Pennsylvania, Obama leads Romney by 6, 45-39. They have Casey cruising to re-election in the Senate race, leading Smith by a 49-32 margin. These numbers are with the D/R split of D+8, reasonable for the Keystone where Democrats enjoy a marked registration advantage.

Here is where I used to get excited but now take issue with Quinnipiac- Pennsylvania and Ohio share similar demographics, but PA, as many cynical morons have pointed out, is several points to the left of its neighbor to the west. This isn't the first Q release showing a markedly more favorable result for Romney in Pennsylvania. Still, a data point is a data point.

The Q poll results are enough to pull Ohio back away from Romney and into toss-up, holds Pennsylvania steady as lean Obama, and changes nothing for Florida (since last week's identical release showed the same margin). Obama currently edges Romney 263-40-235. Why are the changes not more dramatic, given the leads?

Because we are now at the stage in the cycle where your biggest swing states are being polled by multiple firms- whereas Quinnipiac, PPP, and Rasmussen were the big dogs in winter, now everybody is throwing their two cents in and so every individual poll has less of an impact. Michigan has had five firms release in addition to Rasmussen and PPP in just the last two weeks, for example. As more polling firms pile on, each individual poll affects the margin less and less unless the result skews radically away from the rest of the pack, in which case I keep a suspicious eye when throwing them in (if another firm confirms PPP's Obama Ohio decline, Q's poll gets adjusted down in the #AOSHQDD margin).

Disappointing numbers, but they are what they are and there will be some other firm making us ooh and aaah anyway, so in they go. Surely, Quinnipiac can't be that terribly off anyway. I mean, with Michigan averaging a tossup, Oregon about a six point lead for the President, and Wisconsin a scant three pointer for him, it is totally reasonable to say Ohio is better for Obama than Oregon, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, right?

posted by CAC at 06:29 AM

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