As the dramatics of the primary season begin to recede, we’ll be slowing down our pace a bit and getting back to the core mission of this site, which is analyzing general election polling.
The only poll out today is from Rasmussen, which has John McCain leading both Democrats by 4 points in Wisconsin. In Rasmussen’s previous poll of Wisconsin, McCain lead Barack Obama by 2 points and Clinton by 11. Other polling in Wisconsin has been more favorable to Obama, and we still rate him as a favorite to take the state.
One commonality between Wisconsin and New Hampshire, where Obama has also polled badly recently, is the large number of independent voters in each state, a group with whom Obama has also lost some traction in national polling. Independent voters tend to be heavy consumers of news, and so it will be interesting to see whether Obama can make up ground if he gets more favorable coverage coming out of Indiana and North Carolina.