Rasmussen has a couple of new polls out this morning that remind each Democrat of a couple of their biggest weaknesses in the general election.
In Iowa, Barack Obama leads John McCain by 4 points, but McCain leads Hillary Clinton by 15 points. Iowa has consistently featured just about the largest Obama-Clinton performance gap of any state not subject to home state effects. In fact, it has the largest gap of any state if we use win percentage as the metric; Obama is presently at 86% to win Iowa, and Hillary just 15%:
Iowa 71% (Obama outperforms Clinton)
Arkansas 69% (Clinton outperforms Obama)
Colorado 65% (Obama outperforms Clinton)
Oregon 46% (Obama outperforms Clinton)
New Hampshire 43% (Obama outperforms Clinton)
West Virginia 42% (Clinton outperforms Obama)
Washington 41% (Obama outperforms Clinton)
It seems probable to me that some of the difficulties that Clinton has had in Iowa might stem from the perception her campaign sort of threw the state’s caucus process under the bus. If so, I’ll bet that some of the damage done is reparable, although not without some significant investment of resources on the ground.
Meanwhile, in Tennessee, Rasmussen has McCain leading Clinton by 14, and Obama by 27. Obama continues to perform brutally poorly in the Appalachian region of the country, both in the primaries and in general election polls. However, for Clinton the news is not good either; Tennessee was a state that we’d regarded as potentially competitive for her.