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Michigan versus Ohio (and Pennsylvania)

Barack Obama’s numbers in the Rust Belt region are now showing a relatively typical distribution of support: he’s a slight favorite to win both Pennsylvania (56%) and Michigan (52%), but a modest underdog in Ohio (38%). Hillary Clinton’s numbers, on the other hand, are a little bit flipped: she looks like she might win Pennsylvania somewhat comfortably in the general election, and she’s favored to win Ohio. But she hasn’t led McCain in a Michigan poll since Ann Selzer polled the state in December.

Is this some kind of a reverberation from the re-vote controversy in Michigan, as I’ve speculated below? Or is there something about the microtrends demographics in these states that reverses their usual order for Clinton? Below is a hodgepodge of demographic data on each state, some of which should be familiar and some of which is a little more exotic (I’m going to be incorporating a few more of these variables into our regression model in the near future). I’ll leave you with this, and let you come to your own conclusions.

Nate Silver is the founder and editor in chief of FiveThirtyEight.

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