Obama a big drag

If this election is a referendum on Barack Obama then o boy are Democrats in trouble. In our final round of 18 polls we found the President with a positive approval rating among likely voters in only 1 state- Connecticut. Even there only 46% of voters expressed support for the job he's doing. He's slightly under water in some of the bluest states out there- California, Washington, even his home state of Illinois.

And the bad news for Democratic candidates across the country is that we found very few voters disapproving of Obama who were willing to then turn around and vote for Democratic candidates. Joe Manchin was an exception but for the most part no Democrats were getting more than 5-10% of the vote from people who disapproved of Obama. There's a lot of good Democrats tonight- both incumbents and challengers- who are going to lose and it won't be because of anything they did wrong. It's just hard to overcome an incumbent President of your party being so unpopular with the people most motivated to vote.

Here are Obama's state by state numbers from best spread to worst:

State	Obama Approval	Spread
Connecticut	46/44	+2
California	46/48	-2
Illinois	45/47	-2
Minnesota	43/49	-6
Maine	40/51	-11
Washington	42/53	-11
Colorado	41/53	-12
Pennsylvania	40/53	-13
North Carolina	41/55	-14
Nevada	41/56	-15
Florida	40/55	-15
New Hampshire	39/55	-16
Wisconsin	37/54	-17
Ohio	38/55	-17
Alaska	38/55	-17
Texas	33/61	-28
West Virginia	31/61	-30
Kentucky	31/62	-31