Free Republic

If requiring Catholic universities and hospitals to cover contraception for employees ends up hurting President Obama with Catholic voters, then Wisconsin is one place to keep an eye on. That’s because it’s one of the most Catholic of the presidential swing states. Among this year’s likely electoral battlegrounds, only New Hampshire (38%) and New Mexico (36%) had a higher percentage of Catholic voters than Wisconsin (33%) in 2008, according to exit polls: An Administration decision not to exempt religious employers from a mandate to cover contraception has sparked an outcry among church officials and leading Republicans. (Churches are exempt from...

After the midterm elections, Democrats argued that the Tea Party-inspired turnout was a fluke, and that grassroots voters would start turning on Republicans as soon as they had a share in responsibility for governance. According to the latest Democracy Corps survey of battleground Congressional districts, neither are true, at least not yet. Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg surveyed voters in 60 Republican-held purple districts and found that voters are even more sour on Democrats than in 2010: One of the Democratic party’s leading pollsters released a survey of 60 Republican-held battleground districts today painting an ominous picture for Congressional Democrats in...

National polls put Barack Obama in the mid-40s and slightly underwater, which could indicate trouble for him in 2012 — if the Presidency was won on a national popular vote. (Ask Al Gore how that works out.) National Journal took a look at polling in battleground states and sees a much bigger problem than national polls indicate: In every reputable battleground state poll conducted over the past month, Obama’s support is weak. In most of them, he trails Republican front-runner Mitt Romney. For all the talk of a closely fought 2012 election, if Obama can’t turn around his fortunes in...

Get ready for another huge presidential battle in Florida. Despite the drubbing Democrats took in 2010, nobody is underestimating Barack Obama's ability to take the state that Republicans need to capture the White House — or the difficulty he'll have winning it again. "Florida is always in play. Neither party can take Florida for granted, but Marco Rubio proved that our voters tend to be center-right and antideficit spending voters,'' said Republican strategist Sally Bradshaw, a top adviser to Mitt Romney in 2008 and now an adviser to expected candidate Haley Barbour. "Obama's going to have to roll up his...

Clinging to their compliments regarding former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s (R) healthcare law, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman’s (R) fine work as ambassador to China and the prospect that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) will somehow be nominated by the GOP, Team Obama has begun to accept that the audacity of hoping for an anemic Republican field won’t get President Obama reelected in 2012. As the Republican race begins in earnest, and Obama kicks off his own reelection campaign, it is increasingly clear that the path to an Obama victory is anything but clear. Stubborn joblessness, soaring gas prices,...

The current AP/Roper poll indicates most of us are “moderates”, but that’s not true. The sample – and how you ask the question – is very important. AP/Roper consistently shows one-third of the population describes themselves as moderate, while the George Washington University Battleground Poll consistently shows almost two-thirds of registered likely voters are somewhat or very conservative. Only 2 percent describe themselves as moderate in the Battleground Poll. How can the discrepancy be explained?

Voters, by a 9-point margin, believe Republicans will pick up both the House and the Senate, even though they are evenly divided over whom they intend to back in six weeks, according to a new POLITICO/George Washington University Battleground Poll. In a generic matchup between the two parties, those surveyed were split 43-43 when asked if they would back a Republican or a Democrat on Election Day. This is good news for Democrats and at odds with many other public polls, which have shown Republicans holding a single-digit edge. Continue Reading Text Size * - * + * reset Listen...

Good news for conservatives in the latest Battleground Poll. The political implications are profound, if the already-energized conservative base takes even more initiative. In August 2008, I wrote an article on "The Biggest Missing Story in Politics." The article explains that conservatives are an overwhelming majority of America. One year later, I wrote an update on that theme, this time based on the Gallup Poll, which showed that conservatives outnumber liberals in virtually every state of the union. I have been writing about the remarkable Battleground Poll results in many articles for many years. The Battleground Poll reveals the internals...

(11-04) 16:30 PST SAN FRANCISCO -- Republican presidential candidate John McCain grabbed early leads over Democrat Barack Obama in the battleground states of Virginia, Florida and Indiana as the first votes came in this evening. McCain had leads of 54 to 46 percent in Florida and 53 to 47 percent in Virginia, both with less than 2 percent of precincts reporting. In Indiana, McCain's lead was 50 to 49 percent, with 10 percent reporting.

The Latest From Inside McCain HQ November 04, 2008 11:30 AM ET | James Pethokoukis | I just talked to one of my best Team McCain sources who told me that heading into today all the key battleground polls were moving hard and fast in their direction. The source, hardly a perma-optimist, thinks it will be a long night, but that McCain is going to win. So add this with the new Battleground poll (Obama +1.9 only) and the rising stock market...

Fox news just reported that Fox/Rasmussent battle gound polls showing extrodinary tightening about to be released. Keep fighting!

The final Harris Poll from Nov 2, 2004...Another piece of evidence pointing to a likely Kerry victory is that online Harris Polls in these large, key states, which may well determine the Electoral College result, all show modest Kerry leads. However, all these leads are within the possible sampling error for these surveys. Assuming the forecast is correct, Kerry is likely to win all three large states, and almost certainly the White House along with it. The sample sizes were well over 1,000 likely voters in Florida (1,433), Pennsylvania (1,204), and Ohio (1,218).

Is MO still the litmus state it has been? I seem to remember that in the last 100 years MO has predicted the winner of every presidential elections except one. I do remember reading that the demographics of MO made it the ultimate poll. I'm not sure if that goes out the window this election? Opinions? If not Realclearpolitics has McCain up .4 in MO and that might be a bit of encouragement for our guy.

A Halloween Day poll shows John McCain trailing Barack Obama by one point in the “toss-up” states that could decide Tuesday’s presidential election. The George Washington University Battleground Poll gives Obama and running mate Joe Biden 47 percent, with 46 percent for McCain and running mate Sarah Palin in those states and 4 percent undecided. The campaigns are focusing advertising and visits in those battleground states. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will appear with McCain on Friday in Columbus, Ohio. McCain and Palin also have stops planned over the next few days in Florida, Virginia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Iowa. The...

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An urgent message from The Republican National Trust PAC Obama's campaign is trying to stop our TV ad from running! We have struck a real nerve. On Friday four broadcast television stations in the key battleground stations have contacted us and said the Obama camp is denying a key allegation in one of our hard-hitting TV ads. They even demanded that the stations stop running our TV ad. As you know, we at the Republican National Trust PAC are spearheading the effort to expose Obama as the radical he is and defeat him on Election Day. In our TV ad...

GWU/Battleground Poll: 049, M46

Thursday, October 23, 2008 - 2:40 PM MST Battleground polls: Obama 47%, McCain 46% Phoenix Business Journal - by Mike Sunnucks A Thursday poll puts the presidential vote at 48 percent for Barack Obama and running mate Joe Biden versus 45 percent for Arizona Sen. John McCain and running mate Sarah Palin. Four percent are undecided in the new poll conducted by George Washington University, Tarrance Group and Lake Partners. But the poll also shows that in toss-up states, the Obama-Biden ticket has 47 percent compared with 46 percent for McCain-Palin with 5 percent undecided. States such as Florida, Virginia,...

FReepers! I have done some ground work this morning and wanted to present some excellent news. I have looked through the internal report of today's battleground poll and found very encouraging figures! Dont even bother worrying about zogby; Lets keep our eyes on Battleground, IDP TIPP, and to a lesser extent Rasmussen. So, the link is attached to the pdf. I encourage EVERYONE to read it and post in this thread the positive things you see...there is so much! I will start by posting what i see first: weighting: R373 (36.97%) I212(21%) D424(42.02) some goodies: McCain leads in all of...

New FReeper is traveling from a solid red state (GA) to travel to Ohio to volunteer through election day for McCain/Palin. Please ping me with any FReeper activities planned in central and southern Ohio. Also asking for prayers in, Ohio volunteers, and prayers for this election

Here is the 2004 breakdown of the seven battleground states McCain has to win: FL 41R-37D-22I VA 39R-35D-26I NC 40R-39D-21I OH 40R-35D-25I MO 36R-35D-29I CO 38R-29D-23I NV 39R-35D-26I PA 39R-41D-20I I know most if not all of these states will be 2-3 points closer to the Dems, but is that going to make up the difference he lost most of these states by? My guess is no.

Polling News & Notes Overlooked Recent Polling And Insights • October 9, 2008 How Many Votes Will Be Cast Before Election Day? Every state allows voters to mail in absentee ballots, but more and more states are allowing voters to cast ballots in person before the election, a process known as “early voting.” Twelve states allowed early voting in 2004; 34 states and the District of Columbia will have an early voting process this year. Ten of this year’ battleground states have early voting, and five of them did in 2004, with between 31% and 52% of all of the...

election

Election

John McCain kept his three-point lead over Barack Obama in a Mason-Dixon Research poll of likely Virginia voters that was released today. The Republican’s 48-to-45 advantage in the Mason-Dixon poll once again emphasizes Virginia’s status as a battleground state, because the poll’s margin of error is four points. McCain’s margin, of only three points, means the pollster can’t be confident about who’s ahead. In the Lynchburg-Danville region, the Mason-Dixon poll gives McCain an 11-point advantage over Democrat Obama, but the margin of error is higher for the poll’s regional breakdowns. In Roanoke and Southwest Virginia, McCain is ahead by a...

Obama 49%, McCain 44% (+3 points from yesterday).

What will happen if the state vote must be recounted in battleground states whose governors and secretaries of state have different political party affiliations? Presently, the governors of 7 of 17 battleground states are of different party affiliation than their secretaries of state. In the list of 17 "battleground" states listed below, the name of each state is followed by the governor's name which is followed by the secretary of state's name which is followed by recent polling data for that state. Colorado Bill Ritter (D) Mike Coffman (R)FOX News/Rasmussen (9/29) Obama 49, McCain 48 Obama +1 Florida Charlie Crist...

...Republicans acknowledge that McCain is behind, but say the race is closer than the polling indicates. "I honestly believe right now in Iowa that Obama is ahead but it is less than five (percent)," said former Iowa Republican Chairman Michael Mahaffey. [Today's] visit is McCain's second in less than two weeks. He has scheduled a small-business round-table in Des Moines, following up on a Sept. 18 stop in Cedar Rapids with running mate Sarah Palin. His campaign also has continued television advertising in the state at roughly the same level as Obama. "I don't believe Sen. Obama has the lead...

3 national presidential race polls out today show the Obama campaign losing ground or holding on in the race against John McCain. The Gallup daily tracking poll has gone from a high of 50-44 in favor of Obama to 47-44 in favor of Obama, a loss of 3 percent for the democrat. The Rasmussen Tracking poll, which used the largest sample(3000) of any recent national poll (and is made up of "likely voters" as opposed to registered voters like Gallup) shows the race remains tied at 48-48 percent. The latestBattleground Poll of likely voters has gone from 47-47, to 48-47...

Florida 51/46 McCain Ohio 50/46 McCain Virginia 50/48 McCain Michigan 51/46 Obama Pennsylvani 48/45 Obama

Battleground Poll Tracking McCain (48%) Obama (47%) released 9/22/08. If you click "Battleground" you get a PDF file of the poll internals.

Battleground Poll Tracking McCain (47%) Obama (47%) released 9/19/08. If you click "Battleground" you get a PDF file of the poll internals.

Apologies if this was posted already, numbers look decent for McCain, check out Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania: Obama 45, McCain 45 Iowa: Obama 45, McCain 45 Ohio: Obama 46, McCain 45 Minnesota: Obama 47, McCain 45 Wisconsin: Obama 45, McCain 44 Michigan: Obama 48, McCain 44 Indiana: McCain 47, Obama 43 Illinois: Obama 53, McCain 37

If you click "Battleground" you get a PDF file of the poll internals.

McCain/Victory rally at the Obama event on Wednesday, September 17! Please meet at your favorite Victory office MVP/NRP/CCRP at 3:30 P.M. on Wednesday. The carpool to Cashman Field will arrive at 4:30 P.M. and has been arranged to bring everyone back to the Victory offices afterwards for phonebanking Please wear red to this rally so that we can show Obama and his supporters our sincere commitment to keeping Nevada red! Bring tubes of cheap lipstick with you when you come so that we can distribute them to the crowd with McCain stickers! Please RSVP or send any questions to keepnvred@cox.net...

New York could become a surprise battleground in this year's presidential election, with Senator McCain rapidly dissolving Senator Obama's lead in the Empire State, according to a new poll. The poll by Siena Research Institute, conducted September 8-10, found that Mr. Obama holds a narrow 46-41% lead among likely voters, barely outside the survey's 3.9% margin of error. These numbers represent a decline for Mr. Obama, who led by 8% in the same poll in August, 13% in July, and 18% in June.

During the summer, Barack Obama's calm and confident campaign masterminds were privately talking of a 22-state strategy - targeting nearly half the states in America as "in play". By the time of the Democratic convention late last month, with national polls showing a tightening race, his campaign manager David Plouffe was still briefing that the Illinois senator was running an 18-state strategy. But two weeks are a long time in politics. And with John McCain on a roll after his selection of Sarah Palin as running mate and Sen Obama facing unexpected fund-raising challenges, the election map is now effectively...

Florida: McCain +8Ohio: McCain +1Michigan: McCain +1Colorado: Obama +3Nevada: McCain +1Georgia: McCain +18

Barack Obama's lead over John McCain has diminished considerably in three battleground states, according to a poll published Thursday. The Quinnipiac University polls, conducted from July 23-29, found that Obama's lead has weakened in Pennsylvania and Ohio, two key swing states in November's presidential election. The poll also found the two candidates in a virtual tie in Florida.

In 2006, voters put control of the U.S. Congress back in the hands of the Democrat Party after just 10 short years. Voters were growing unhappy with a lot of things at the time and certainly the War in Iraq contributed. But this latest survey of voters across the country (Battleground XXXII), suggests the changing of Congressional leadership has done little to stem that tide.Today voters are even more negative about the direction the country is taking. Perhaps most importantly a plurality of American voters now think in the future their children will be worse off than they themselves are...

A classic dispute before the Air Resources Board, pitting environmentalists against builders over a multibillion-dollar plan to cut diesel pollution, has gone beyond the confines of the ARB and is spilling over into the state budget and the highest levels of the Schwarzenegger administration. Environmentalists have successfully pushed into the 2007-08 Senate budget version a provision that requires builders, with some exceptions, who win new infrastructure-construction contracts to use specially approved exhaust filters to block harmful diesel emissions. The language could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars--directly from the pockets of equipment owners. "The point here is to make...

The Future As the Presidential Campaign Takes Shape [snip]Looking at the 2008 Presidential Elections, the Republican Party has two strong and popular potential candidates – Rudy Giuliani (64%favorable/22% unfavorable) and John McCain (62% favorable/25% unfavorable). Both are at a 2.5 to 1 favorable/unfavorable ratio and both have strong images with Independents and in the Northeast, Midwest, and West – all demographics where the Republican Party has struggled in recent years. In addition, Mitt Romney (22% favorable/13% unfavorable) has a slightly positive image with considerable room to grow with 46% of likely voters having never heard of him. In contrast,...

MILWAUKEE - When it comes to statewide votes on gay marriage, the score so far is 20-0 in favor of keeping it a one-man, one-woman institution. If there's a chance to break the streak on Nov. 7, it might be in Wisconsin, where activists believe that support from unions, college students and church leaders — coupled with hoped-for conservative apathy — could enable them to finally overcome the string of losses. Among the hopeful are Debbie Knepke and Candice Hackbarth, devoted partners for nine years, raising a 3-year-old daughter and 7-month-old son in pleasant Milwaukee neighborhood. They have joined some...

GW-Battleground 2006 Poll Reveals Negative Environment for President Bush and Congressional Republicans and Potential Opportunities for Democrats in 2006 WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 25, 2005--The George Washington University Battleground 2006 Poll finds that the events of the past few months have had a negative impact on President Bush and the Congressional Republicans. However, it is not yet clear if the Democratic Party will be able to translate these negative sentiments into major gains at the polls in 2006. "Today, President Bush and Republicans face a political environment that, as reflected in current polling numbers, is the most negative environment of his Presidency,"...

Many argue that communism will never be possible because of "human nature". The essence of this false argument is the belief that a communist society would consist of an all-powerful central government that would tell everybody what to do--and would therefore undermine the creative initiative of individuals and the search for happiness. • This argument is based on two false assumptions: (1) It assumes that a communist society will look like the former Soviet Union, or the current China, North Korea, etc (ie: corrupt police states with a feudal-style ruling class) (2) It assumes that people will only work in...

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/cmp/20050715/tc_cmp/165702500 UN Panel: No Single Nation Should Control Internet Addresses Aoife White Thu Jul 14, 9:38 PM ET BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP)--A U.N. panel created to recommend how the Internet should be run in the future has failed to reach consensus but did agree that no single country should dominate. The United States stated two weeks ago that it intended to maintain control over the computers that serve as the Internet's principal traffic cops. In a report released Thursday, the U.N. panel outlined four possible options for the future of Internet governance for world leaders to consider at a November "Information...

Here is the list so far for sponcers to this hate America fest: ANSWER Code Pink UFPJ NION Al Awda World Workers Party Ruckas Revolutionary Communist party Moveon.org ACORN Campus Antiwar Network International Socialist Org Greens Party Muslim Student Association CPUSA

Columbus -- Ending one of the last fights from the contentious 2004 presidential campaign, Ohio's top judge on Thursday declined to punish four attorneys who had challenged the results in court. Chief Justice Thomas Moyer ruled against Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro's attempt to have the lawyers sanctioned for filing "a meritless claim" against the vote that gave President Bush a win in Ohio and, as a result, enough electoral votes to win a second term in the White House. In legal documents filed with the state Supreme Court, the lawyers had said the challenge they filed on behalf of...

DUmmieland is in an uproar because the Leftwing TomPaine.Com website published an article claiming that there was NO vote fraud conspiracy in Ohio. This is heresy in the eyes of the DUmmies because one of their most treasured beliefs is that the EVIL Republicans STOLE the election by rigging the votes in Ohio. One side effect of this belief is that it made Bev Harris a very rich woman since she scammed the DUmmies for at least $300,000 by making them think she was only $10 away from proving vote fraud in Ohio. There are actually two DUmmie threads...

Russ Baker —an investigative reporter and essayist—is a longtime TomPaine.com contributor. He is involved in the development of  a new not-for-profit organization dedicated to revitalizing investigative journalism in America . To read more about the problems in the 2004 presidential election and proposals for reforming our electoral system, see  Best Of TomPaine: Election Irregularities In 2004.Back in January, I wrote a piece for TomPaine.com questioning widely circulated claims that the election in Ohio had been stolen. I had done some poking around, anticipating that at least some of the frightening anecdotes filling our mail boxes and raging on talk radio would be...