North Carolina folks will find this particularly eye-opening:
http://publicpolicypolling.blogspot.com/2008/09/wake-county-statewide-races.html
Wake County (Raleigh and Cary) is one of the many areas that Obama has really tried to muck with the suburban voters to help him in the general election. It's a variant form of the play that has worked in Virginia since 2005-flip the suburban voters by hammering pocketbook issues in your campaign, get the AA vote in huge numbers, and you are all the sudden competitive in a state that went +12 to the other guy last cycle.
To put into perspective how important Wake County is toward Obama's surprisingly strong standing in the state, consider this:
-There are, still five and a half weeks out from the election, about 75,000 more registered voters than there were in Wake County for the 2004 election.
Note-a lot of these are college grads and transplants from out of state. People come to Wake County to work, there are a lot of good white collar jobs here.
-Even if no one else registered to vote in the county, and turnout as a percentage was not higher this year than in 2004 there would be 410,000 voters this time compared to about 360,000 last time.
-That means if the election was today Obama would take the county by roughly 70,000 votes. Given that Kerry lost it by around 7,000 that's a 77,000 vote gain for Obama in Wake County alone. That's 18% of the 435,000 vote margin George W. Bush took the state by last time right there.
In other other heavily populated parts of the Triangle (Orange and Durham counties) Obama is going totally run up the score. These places are super-blue spots, and rich white liberals like me and African Americans will turn out in much greaternumbers compared to 2004. It's very possible that Obama can close the Kerry/Bush gap by 30-35% in the Triangle area alone.
Obama, according to PPP, is also polling about 12 points better than Bush did in the deep red rural congressional districts.
Really good news from NC. PPP will have a FL poll out later this week which will likely be very eye-opening-68% of voters said the economy is the #1 issue.
