Florida. Some good news for John Kerry in last week's American Research Group poll of likely Florida voters, which gave him a 47-44-3 lead, the largest ARG has ever registered for Kerry in the Sunshine State. Factoring Nader out leaves Kerry with a slightly stronger 49-45 lead. Even better, Kerry has now reached 100 percent name recognition with a 51-44 favorable-unfavorable spread, while George W. Bush suffers with a net negative 44-46 split. On the other hand, a July 12-14 poll by Republican firm Strategic Visions had Kerry-Edwards lagging two points behind Bush-Cheney in a survey with a larger sample of likely voters.
Thus with things remaining close, efforts to assemble a winning coalition amidst Florida's ethnic mélange continue furiously. The New Republic's Ryan Lizza reports that the Kerry campaign thinks it may be the first to successfully break the GOP's stranglehold on the Cuban-American vote by exploiting generational divisions within the community, while the Palm Beach Post reports that Kerry dispatched his Jewish brother Cameron (he converted after marrying a Jewish woman in 1983) to campaign among Jewish retirees in southern Florida. The Post reports that Cameron "is not as tall or craggy" as his older brother.
While Cameron hit up the Jewish communities, John Edwards was dispatched to central Florida to try and work his magic among culturally southern voters. Meanwhile, John Kerry himself will be paying a visit to Florida's Kennedy Space Center early next week to highlight the space program's spirit as an example of what activist government can achieve for the common good.
Minnesota. Two polls conclusively report that John Kerry and George W. Bush are in a dead heat. Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) and the St. Paul Pioneer Press commissioned a poll that shows 45 percent of voters favoring Kerry, with 44 percent supporting Bush. The poll's margin of error of plus or minus 4 points makes the race a toss-up.
The Humphrey Institute corroborated the MPR-Pioneer Press findings with the preliminary results of a poll that showed Kerry ahead of Bush 49 percent to 46 percent in a two-man race, which is also within the poll's margin of error. The Nader factor may be pulling key votes from Kerry in this traditional “blue” state. In the poll, Ralph Nader received 2 percent of the vote, while a coveted 9 percent remained undecided. Without Nader in the race, Kerry increases his lead over Bush to 48 percent to 45 percent. This change suggests that Nader is not only taking some of the Democrats votes but also competing for Kerry's swing voters.
Bush has visited Minnesota nine times; Kerry has made it here five.
Nevada. Recent developments would seem to hint at brightening prospects here for Kerry, who trailed Bush by 11 points in the last major Nevada poll, which was taken in March. As usual for presidential politics in this state, at the center of it all is Yucca.
The plan to build a huge underground nuclear-waste dump in the Yucca Mountain has of course been a major vulnerability for Bush in the state since he approved the project two years ago. The issue was reignited by last week's ruling from U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruling that invalidated the Department of Energy's plan on technical grounds. The department has indicated that it will move forward with the plan in spite of the ruling, but the court's decision has only emboldened anti-Yucca forces. The Kerry campaign is hoping to score big on this issue, and John Edwards -- who voted for the Yucca plan in 2002 -- has made it clear that he'll defer to his running mate on the matter. (Not that it's all Yucca, all the time for the Dems: The Kerry campaign unveiled its Forest Restoration Corps initiative last week in heavily Republican western Nevada, where wildfires have raged in the last month.)
Meanwhile, the Media Fund has been running, among others, radio and print ads that ask Bush, “Why are you making Nevada a dumping ground for America's nuclear waste?”
The latest Zogby interactive poll of battleground states last week gives Nevada to Kerry. Perhaps more impressively, an internal poll taken by Garin-Hart-Yang Research Group for 3rd District Democratic congressional hopeful Tom Gallagher shows Kerry beating Bush 49 percent to 46 percent in that district. The bellwether 3rd District, encompassing most of the vast Vegas suburbs and a third of the state's population, is almost perfectly split between Republicans and Democrats.
Ohio. Death, taxes … and Ohio? There are few certainties in life, but in each election since 1964, this state's presidential choice has also won the national ticket. For Republicans, the streak is longer: No Republican has ever won the presidential election without taking Ohio.
To be sure, both campaigns have flooded Ohio's airwaves. According to a Nielson Monitor-Plus and University of Wisconsin Advertising Project study released on Sunday, July 18th, television viewers in Ohio were more likely to see ads in the presidential contest than were viewers in any other state in the country. Of the 210 media markets across the nation, four out of the top five markets targeted for presidential advertising are in Ohio. So far, the Kerry-philic message is reaching far more television viewers in the Buckeye state than the Bush campaign's: The study found that the combined advertising efforts of the Kerry campaign, sympathetic "527s" like MoveOn.org and the Media Fund, and the AFL-CIO have solidly outpaced the Bush campaign in the Toledo, Columbus, Dayton, and Cleveland television markets.
Pennsylvania. To much fanfare, President Bush made his 30th trip to Pennsylvania on July 9. By now you probably know that this state's 23 electoral votes are some of the most sought after in this race. Al Gore and Bill Clinton both won here, and John Kerry's 16 campaign trips to the state underscore his own commitment to keeping Pennsylvania safely in the Democratic column. Both candidates have preached from the gospel of economic growth in the heart of the Rust Belt: Pennsylvania has lost more than 150,000 manufacturing jobs since Bush took office. But that is old, if still important, news.
While the White House press pool was dozing during the president's most recent visit to Pennsylvania, Jack Brubaker of the Lancaster New Era was busy breaking news -- Amish news, more specifically. It turns out that while on the trail in Lancaster County, the heart of Pennsylvania's Amish country, the president made an impromptu request to visit a local woman who had recently knitted him a quilt. Half an hour later, 60 Amish folks crowded into a room at a local electric company. Men and boys came straight from the fields, mud streaking their dark pants and shoes. Bonneted women in plain dresses left their homes, babies in tow, to meet the leader of the free world.
Bush had never met an Amish person before, and he was clearly smitten with the group. He chatted with the women, and he tried on one of the men's straw hats. When he asked for their vote in November, one man told him that while not all members of the Amish church vote, the group would pray for him. According to one witness, the president teared up. Bush closed the session by reportedly testifying to having a very close relationship to God. "I trust God speaks through me,” he said. “Without that, I couldn't do my job."
No word yet on whether the Amish were offended by this grandiose statement of divine authority.
Wisconsin. According to preliminary results from a Humphrey Institute poll Bush leads Wisconsin in a two-man race with 48.4 percent of the vote to Kerry's 45.9 percent. The poll's 4-point margin of error leaves Kerry and Bush neck and neck. When Nader was introduced to the equation, Bush had 46.1-percent support to Kerry's 45.9 percent, with Nader grabbing 4 percent and Libertarian Michael Badnarik 1.5 percent. The independent voters add an interesting twist to Wisconsin's voting pattern, with 49.5 percent decisively favoring Bush compared with 29.7 percent for Kerry. This breaks with the patterns of Minnesota, where independents are significantly in favor of Kerry, and Iowa, where independents are 50-50 for each candidate.
Edwards will be in Milwaukee this Saturday as part of his build-up tour before the Democratic National Convention. No details are available about the appearance, but this will be Edwards' first visit to Wisconsin since finishing second here in February's Democratic primary.
According to results from Nielsen Monitor-Plus and the University of Wisconsin Advertising Project, the typical household in the Milwaukee area saw 177 ads from either campaign between March 3 and June 20. The study didn't count the additional 57 ads from pro-Kerry groups separate from the campaign. Wisconsin television markets were only slightly below the saturation levels of top advertising states Ohio and Missouri. However, the type of audience that Kerry and Bush are trying to entice is very different. Bush has been advertising during crime shows like NYPD Blue and Law and Order, which typically attract males, while Kerry has been concentrating on daytime shows like The Ellen DeGeneres Show and Oprah, which generally draw more women. University of Wisconsin political-science professor Ken Goldstein, who led the analysis, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that more than $200 million has already been spent on campaign advertising -- and that he expects "much more of the same" between now and November 2.
Compiled by the Prospect staff. Click here to read last week's "Purple People Watch."