Following up on yesterday’s discussion of surprising Democratic strength in Utah, a new poll shows the president beating all comers in Tennessee. It’s one poll, and I don’t want to suggest that I have confidence that the Dems can win a Senate seat in Utah or the president will win the Volunteer State’s electoral votes, but these are early signs that we could be gearing up for one hell of an ass-kicking. I certainly hope so. If Obama wins Tennessee, he’s going to win almost everywhere. Outside of the Deep South, Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho, I’d put Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia as the president’s toughest states to win. If he wins Tennessee, he’s probably going to win the Dakotas and maybe even Nebraska and Kansas.
I would love to have a breakthrough from this red/blue divide that has grown so tiresome.
I wish people understood how to read polls.
Obama’s approval is 44 in this poll, which is not materially different from the 42 he got 2008, but is a little suspect given that his national numbers are below his 2008 numbers.
He’s not going to win Tennessee unless U3 goes below 7 and the economy recovers very quickly.
Funny – plenty of discouragement and doomsaying to be found in the comments to Booman’s previous pessimistic post about the environment. Yet zero optimism to be found in his more upbeat post here? What does that say about the liberal attitude?
Not much.
I won’t believe any set of numbers until aroundabout October 2012. This has to be the most fickle electorate the world has seen since the heydey of the demagogues in ancient Athens.
that’s true. Although it’s certainly more of an oscillation between low and high turnout elections than real preference changes.
Unfortunatly, I’m reminded of a blogger back in the early 2000s. Much was made of the fact that Gore didn’t win his own state. The blogger, born and raised in the Bible Belt and son of a liberal preacher there, spoke of Tennessee as having become the Mecca of fundies and said that if Gore had been able to win Tennessee, he (the blogger) wouldn’t have voted for him. In other words, Gore would have had to have shifted so far to the right that the blogger would no longer have supported him. Let’s hope this isn’t the case with Obama.