Yesterday I went over some of the latest polling data out of California; today I’ve got the numbers from an almost equally important state — Pennsylvania.
With over 12 million people and 21 electoral votes, Pennsylvania is among the top five states in the Union when it comes to presidential politics. The state is often perceived as a Democratic stronghold, but Pennsylvania politics is more complicated than that.
To be sure, the state’s two major population bases — Philadelphia on the east and Pittsburgh on the west — are heavily Democratic, but the center of the state is extremely conservative. As James Carville once said of Pennsylvania, “It’s Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in the middle.”
The state backed Republican presidential candidates in 1980, 1984, and 1988, but since then, the state has backed only Dems for president. Gore narrowly carried the state in 2000, with a margin of victory less than 4 percent.
In light of its size and largely-divided electorate, most believe that Pennsylvania will be the second most important battleground state in the nation next year, trailing only Florida in significance. The Bush campaign team has already made Pennsylvania a centerpiece of its 2004 strategy, with Bush making 22 trips to the state since his inauguration — a visit every month and a half, on average.
A Quinnipiac University poll released this week shows, however, that Bush may not want to count on a victory in Pennsylvania if he wants a second term.
The president’s statewide approval rating has fallen to 51 percent in Pennsylvania, down nine points from a Quinnipiac poll from August, and down 16 points since April. In fact, Bush’s 51 percent approval rating in Pennsylvania is the lowest he’s scored in-state in the post-9/11 era.
Quinnipiac also offered hypothetical, general election match-ups for poll respondents. Though Bush led all the major Dem candidates, his margin was far smaller than it was two months ago, and most Dems kept Bush’s re-elect numbers below 50 percent.
As usual, Wesley Clark fared the best in a head-to-head match-up with Bush, trailing Bush 48 percent to 43 percent — a 5 point margin. Lieberman trailed Bush by 6 points, Kerry by 7 points, and Gephardt by 8 points. And, in a sign we’ve seen a little too often, Dean fared the worst against Bush, trailing by 10 points.
Speaking of the Dem candidates, the Quinnipiac poll also asked Pennsylvania’s Democratic voters who they’d support for the Dem nomination. The results:
Kerry — 18 percent
Clark — 17 percent
Lieberman — 15 percent
Gephardt — 10 percent
Dean — 5 percent
everyone else below 5 percent
To be fair, Pennsylvania’s Dem primary isn’t held until April 27, by which time the nominee will almost certainly have been decided, so few of the Dem candidates have gone out of their way to reach out to Pennsylvania voters.
That being said, the Quinnipiac poll looks great for Clark, who has surged to the top tier in the state after less than a month, and troubling for Dean, who is running a distant fifth in a key battleground state. In fact, Dean has held multiple events in Philadelphia this year, so the fact that he has only 5 percent support is a troubling sign for his campaign.