Mofo Politics | Hoping Obama Fails

Insider: McCain will win Pennsylvania

Posted October 28th, 2008 under Headlines Tags: election, mccain, obama, pa, pennsylvania, polls, race

For what it’s worth…

Hillbuzz:

Tonight we spoke with a friend from Hillary Clinton’s campaign who is now working for McCain/Palin — and is specifically working with Democrats for McCain in Pennsylvania.

…

Never in any of our careers have any of us ever seen members of one party switching sides and voting for the other party as we see in this election with Democrats for McCain. There has never been anything like it. Not even the “Reagan Democrats” who voted for Reagan over Carter, for the simple fact that these “Reagan Democrats” weren’t identified and labeled until AFTER the election.

But Michael Barone remains skeptical…

One of the mysteries of this campaign year has been why John McCain keeps campaigning in Pennsylvania when the polls show him far behind Barack Obama there—51 percent to 41 percent in the RealClearPolitics.com average of recent polls as I write. A clue comes from the most recent poll there by SurveyUSA, which helpfully provides a regional breakdown of results. SurveyUSA, as it has consistently done, shows McCain running within the margin of error in the southwest (metro Pittsburgh and surroundings) and in the Northeast (Scranton and the anthracite country), which historically are very Democratic areas. Joe Biden’s Scranton roots and the support of Scranton-based Bob Casey don’t seem to be doing Obama much good there. McCain carries the west-central and south-central areas, as most Republicans do. But he is incredibly weak—behind Obama 64 percent to 32 percent in the southeast, which includes about 40 percent of the state’s voters. Most of this area is metropolitan Philadelphia, which George W. Bush lost in 2004 by a 62 percent to 37 percent margin; the remainder is presumably Lehigh, Northampton, Berks, and Lancaster counties, where Bush ran better. The regional breakdown in the most recent Quinnipiac poll tells exactly the same story.

In other words, McCain is running even with or better than Bush in most of Pennsylvania but is running far behind in metro Philly.