The latest poll of likely voters in North Carolina brings good news for presumptive GOP presidential nominee John McCain.
But the folks at Public Policy Polling says the news is not so bad for other Democratic candidates in North Carolina.
In a Feb. 18 survey of 686 likely general election voters, McCain led in match-ups with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. He led Obama 47-42, and Clinton 48-43. The margin of error was plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.
Those margins are closer than in previous polls by PPP.
"These numbers are good news for Democrats," said Dean Debnam, president of PPP. "Obama or Clinton might not win North Carolina, but it looks like they have the ability to keep the race much closer in the state than it has been in recent cycles."
Blog RSS feed
Do What Now?
How, pray tell, is this poll good news for McCain?
Obama and Hillary are both within the margin of error in a state that last voted Democratic in 1976, and the candidates have yet to make a stop in this state that does not involve either fundraising or sneaking into Chapel Hill like a thief in the night to see John Edwards.
This is the big story that no one has covered either locally or nationally: North Carolina will indeed be a swing state this year.
We are no different politically than Virginia. If anything, we're more consistently progressive; the GOP never took power here like they did in VA during the 80s and 90s, after all. But as far as the punditry is concerned, we're a solid red state while the Commonwealth is in play.
Give me a break.
If there happens to be either an Obama-Edwards or Obama-Easley ticket, then NC will go blue by a comfortable margin. And please don't bring up Kerry-Edwards in 2004; Bush was more popular then than McCain is now, and it should be apparent to anyone paying attention by now how much of a better presidential candidate Obama is than the junior senator from Massachusetts.
The conservatives are unenthusiastic about McCain to say the least (and that's not counting this whole alleged quasi-affair with a lobbyist story), and the only thing that would bring them to the polls in droves this general election (namely, Hillary Clinton's name on the ballot) is not going to happen. Add to that what will undoubtedly be record turnouts amongst both black and young voters, and we have the makings for a big surprise come November.