Arizona. Is Arizona really still purple? That's the question on everyone's mind these days. When last we checked in, the state's rock-star senior senator, John McCain, had just reverted to good soldier and commenced stumping for George W. Bush in earnest -- and that seemed to torpedo John Kerry's Arizona prospects for good. (Two polls in late June and early July showed Bush creaming Kerry by twelve points.) McCain has only gotten tighter with W. since, recently accompanying him on a tour of key swing states that culminated in a massive rally last Wednesday at Phoenix's Veterans Memorial Coliseum, which drew a crowd of 15,000.
The fact that the Kerry campaign scaled back its advertising in Arizonaearly last month would seem further indication that it's quietly conceding the state -- but it may still be too early to say. The most recent poll, taken by Market Solutions Group a few days after the Democratic convention, has Bush narrowly beating Kerry 48 to 45, or within the margin of error. That marks a return to the small gap polls had shown at the beginning of the summer, though the undecided figure has shrunk since June from 11 to 7 points.
The campaign is certainly keeping up appearances: Kerry and John Edwards both stumped across the state on August 7th. Their $1 million Spanish-language ad campaign includes heavily Hispanic areas in the state, as does the New Democrat Network's multi-million-dollar Spanish-language media drive. (The Bush campaign is trying to make up for lost ground with their own Spanish-language efforts in Arizona and other swing states.) Efforts to register and mobilize Arizona's huge Hispanic population could, of course, reap dividends for the Democrats for years to come whatever the outcome in November. And certainly it makes sense for Kerry's strategists to force the Bush campaign into expending resources in the state even if they don't expect to take it themselves in the end. But whether or not they do expect to take it, and whether or not they should, still remain unclear.
Arkansas. Has the state gone from purple to light red? Rumblings in the local press that the Kerry campaign had decided to pull its television ads and concede Arkansas have been met with a swift reaction by the Kerry-Edwards campaign. Coinciding with new Bush campaign advertisements debuting in Arkansas' media markets, Edwards was dispatched to the state on Tuesday to demonstrate his campaign's continued commitment to Arkansas. He hosted his own town meeting at the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith where he discussed the economy and job creation. This was his second visit to the state in two weeks; and Kerry's Arkansas campaign chief, Rodney Shelton, assured a gathering of state-wide political reporters that Edwards' stop would "dispel any rumors that the Kerry-Edwards campaign is not targeting Arkansas."
Though Bush and his Club for Growth allies seem to be dominating the airwaves here, neither candidate has majority support. A recent statewide poll by Zogby International gives Bush only a narrow two percent lead, well within the poll's margin of error. Like other battleground states, turnout is key to a democratic victory here. According to long-time Arkansas columnist John Brummett, Kerry's prospects of earning Arkansas' six electoral votes are likely to hinge on his ability to pull a large election day turnout in Bill Clinton's old stronghold in eastern Arkansas.
Nevada. The most recent poll -- a July 30 Zogby survey -- showed the Nevada race neck-in-neck with Bush maintaining an ultra-small 46-45-4 lead in the three-way horse race. Many Nevada Democrats are, however, taking heart from some extremely good news on the voter registration front. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported on August 6 that Clark Country -- by far Nevada's largest and most pro-Democratic -- has seen an average of 5,000 new registrations each week for the past six months. In the 2000 cycle, 5,000 new registrants was the highest number for any week.
The additional 130,000 voters implied by that figure could make an enormous difference in a state where only 581,553 people voted in 2000. Indeed, given that Bush's margin of victory last time was just 21,579 votes, pre-existing splits in public opinion could easily be swamped by new voters. Assuming the Kerry campaign can get the same proportion of new Clark County voters as the Gore campaign did of old ones, it's already within striking distance of Bush's 2000 margin. Local election officials anticipate that the pace of new registrations will only increase between now and the mid-October deadline for the general election. If so, that'll be good news indeed for the Kerry campaign.
Oregon. Last time we checked, the United States was a pretty big country. But despite the more than 3.5 million square miles available to them, George W. Bush and John Kerry keep running into each other on the campaign trail. A few weeks ago, the caravans crossed paths in Davenport, Iowa. Less than three weeks later, the candidates were again within spitting distance of one another in the Pacific Northwest, both hot on the trail of Oregon's seven electoral votes.
Nearly 40,000 people gathered along the banks of the Willamette River in downtown Portland to greet Kerry as he pounded away at the immorality of the Bush tax cuts and defended his much-derided “sensitive” approach to the war on terror. Bush drew a much smaller -- and more ardent -- crowd to the Southridge High School gymnasium in Beaverton, a suburb of Portland. During the question and answer session, one woman requested that the president pray for the high percentage of “unchurched” Oregonians; another man derided John Kerry's Vietnam record, declaring that the candidate received his Purple Hearts for “self-inflicted scratches.” Bush just smiled and nodded.
Thankfully, future visits to the Beaver State probably aren't in the cards for the president. Bush's invitation-only appearance drew flak from the Oregonian newspaper, which ran a cartoon portraying the Bush campaign as snobby and elitist. The caption read: “Bush Campaign Rally, A Gated Community.” But most importantly, since May, Bush's popularity here has declined by nearly 6 percentage points. Perhaps the Kerry campaign's outsized summer ad buys in Oregon did the trick. According to a Zogby poll taken in late July, Kerry leads Bush here by over nine percentage points, a comfortable margin indeed. Bush mayhave to pray for all of those unchurched Oregonians from Washington -- it doesn't look like he'll be back here anytime soon.
Compiled by the Prospect staff. Click here to read last week's “Purple People Watch.”
