Mapping Victory

By Kevin Robinson in News on Mar 7, 2008 3:40PM

With Democrats hell-bent on dragging their primary season all the way to the convention, and John McCain all but the GOP nominee, the question of who is more electable is weighing on the minds of many voters. SurveyUSA, whose polling is usually pretty good, put together a couple of nice maps.

They interviewed 600 registered voters in each of the 50 states, for a total of 30,000 interviews, asking who they would vote for in a match up of Hillary Clinton against John McCain, and who they would vote for in a match up against Barack Obama against John McCain. It's important to note, per the professionals, that "there are specific limitations to this exercise. The winner's margin in each state is not always outside of the survey's margin of sampling error. Rather than show states where the results are inside of the margin of sampling error as “leaning” or “toss-ups," SurveyUSA for this illustration assigned Electoral Votes to the candidate with the larger share of the vote, no matter how small the winner's margin." They also point out that they polled registered voters, not likely voters.

With nine months left to go, and no running mates yet, there are plenty of unanswered questions. Hope or experience? Broadening the Democratic coalition, or going with a known quantity in big swing states? With more than a month left to go until Pennsylvania, and Hillary and Barack campaigning hard in Wyoming, looking too hard at polls might give you a headache.