Obama in the swing states

In 2008 Barack Obama won nine states and one electoral vote giving Congressional district that had gone to George W. Bush in 2004. We've now polled every single one of those over the last three months except for Indiana, where we can't do one because of restrictions on automated polling in the state. Across 36 horse race match ups against Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, and Mitt Romney in Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Colorado, New Mexico, Virginia, Iowa, Nevada, and Nebraska's 2nd Congressional District Obama is 36 for 36. If he stood for reelection today against one of the current Republican front runners Obama would almost certainly win the same number of electoral votes he did in 2008, if not more.



Here's how our polls in those eight states and a Congressional district have broken down:

Obama v.	2008 Vote	Gingrich	Huckabee	Palin	Romney
Colorado	+9	+14	+9	+19	+6
Florida	+3	+5	+5	+14	+2
Iowa	+10	+13	+4	+16	+6
NE-2	+1	+19	+11	+24	+9
Nevada	+12	+11	+10	+13	+1
New Mexico	+15	+21	+19	+29	+16
North Carolina	+0	+6	+4	+9	+3
Ohio	+4	+6	+1	+7	+2
Virginia	+6	+11	+5	+11	+5

And some observations:



-Obama won these nine places by an average of seven points in 2008. Only Romney improves on that, trailing by an average of six points in them. Huckabee is down by an average of eight, Gingrich by 12, and Palin by 16. Gingrich does worse than McCain did in 8 of 9 places, improving only in Nevada. Huckabee does worse than McCain did in 4 of the states, better than McCain did in 4 of the states, and the same as McCain did in one of them. Palin does worse than McCain did in every single one of them. Romney does better than McCain did in 6 and worse in 3- North Carolina, Nebraska's 2nd District, and New Mexico.



-The states where Obama's average lead is the lowest- and thus perhaps the ones Republicans will win back first- are Ohio where he leads by an average of 4, North Carolina where he leads by an average of 6, and Florida where he leads by an average of 7. There are four where he has an average double digit lead and thus seem like they would be the hardest for the GOP to get back. Those are Iowa where he leads by an average of 10, Colorado where he's up an average of 12, NE-2 where he's up an average of 16 (although Republicans may get that electoral vote back in another way), and New Mexico where he's up an average of 21. Virginia where he leads by an average of 8 and Nevada where the average advantage is 9 fall in the middle.



Republicans need two things to happen over the next 20 months if they're going to beat Obama and time is one thing they have on their side- they need a much stronger candidate to emerge, whether it's someone outside this top 4 or someone inside this top 4 successfully remaking their image, and they need Obama's numbers to get back in negative territory and probably by a good amount- somewhere south of 45%.