The only poll I could find this morning is a new one from Scott Rasmussen in the state of Georgia.

PRESIDENT – GEORGIA (Rasmussen)
John McCain (R) 53%
Barack Obama (D) 43%
Bob Barr (L) 1%

I guess the people of Georgia don’t like their fellow Georgian all that much after all. This poll was done June 26th among 50 likely voters.

Just one month ago, Survey USA claimed Barack Obama held a 7% lead in the state of Virginia. A mere one month later, John McCain has managed to slice that deficit to just 2%.

PRESIDENT – VIRGINIA (Survey USA)
Barack Obama (D) 49%
John McCain (R) 47%

According to the gang at Survey USA, the party breakdown in the state of Virginia is 43% D / 31% R / 23% I. Seems a little weighted towards the Democrats, but unlike what I showed in Arizona, Virginia does not actually have voters register by party so there is no way to confirm this breakdown that Survey USA found. One thing I will say though is the previous VA poll actually had a closer partisan breakdown, yet somehow McCain is closer in the new poll than he was in the previous poll. Also, I find it hard to believe McCain could get 25% of African-Americans to support him as this poll shows and still lose the state of Virginia.

This poll was done June 20-22 among 630 likely voters.

For more polls from Virginia, click here.

Two months ago, John McCain garnered 57% support in his own home state of Arizona and led Barack Obama by 20%. Now Scott Rasmussen is claiming in just two months, McCain’s lead has fallen to 9% and now doesn’t even get a majority of his own home state voters to support him. All this has, according to Rasmussen, happened in a mere two months.

PRESIDENT – ARIZONA (Rasmussen)
John McCain (R) 49%
Barack Obama (D) 40%

This poll was done June 26th among 500 likely voters.

Now taking this a step further, there has been a lot questions about the partisan breakdown Rasmussen is using in his polls. Unfortunately Rasmussen refuses to release raw numbers, so we have to make some assumptions. Fortunately the Arizona Secretary of State publishes voter registration figures on a regular basis. As of June 1st, according to the AZ Secretary of State, the party registration in Arizona is as follows:

ARIZONA PARTY REGISTRATION

Republicans	1,045,365	38.2%
Democrats	935,638	34.2%
Other/3rd Party	753,105	27.5%

The article indicates the following.

The Arizona Senator is supported by 81% of Republicans and enjoys a twelve point lead among unaffiliated voters. Obama gets the vote from 75% of Democrats.

Using the above breakdown and assuming the 11% undecided vote is the same among all three “parties”, you should get a lead of 50%-39% for McCain instead of the 49%-40% lead Rasmussen is claiming, which I would considered pretty close.

POLL BREAKDOWN

DEMO	McCain	Obama	Undecided
GOP (38.2%)	81%	8%	11%
DEM (34.2%)	14%	75%	11%
OTH (27.5%)	50.5%	38.5%	11%
Total	49.6%	39.2%	11%

To get the total numbers for each candidate, you would multiple their share of the vote for each party by the percentage of the electorate that party represents. For McCain:

0.382 x 81 + 0.342 x 14 + .275 x 50.5 = 49.6%

So based on this, it does appear that Rasmussen is using the correct partisan breakdown to calculate his poll results, at least for this particular poll. If you assume Democrats are slightly more excited, it would explain why Rasmussen shows it slightly closer than the actual party breakdown.

Just one month ago, Barack Obama held a 9% lead in the May Survey USA poll. One month later, John McCain has cut that lead down to a mere 2%.

PRESIDENT – OHIO (Survey USA)
Barack Obama (D) 48%
John McCain (R) 46%

But what is even more interesting is that when Ted Strickland is paired with Obama, Obama actually does worse regardless of who McCain puts on his ticket. In some cases, McCain actually beats Obama when Strickland is added to the Democratic ticket. Now Strickland has said he is not interested in being VP, so it really doesn’t matter now. But it shows how ridiculous the media was being when they were touting a Strickland VP nomination as a way for Obama to lock down the state of Ohio in November. Seems to me Strickland could have done more harm than good, if this poll is to be believed. The other thing about this poll is McCain is supposedly winning the Hispanic vote in Ohio by a 90%-10% margin…mmhmmm….

Screw it, I’m going to happy hour….