McCain leads among independents in Florida, Ohio, and Virginia. (That Ohio result is a big turnaround from 2004, when exit polls showed Kerry with a double-digit advantage among Ohio independents.) Obama holds a 10-point lead among independents in New Mexico, and the two men split independents almost evenly in Colorado, where they are the fastest-growing segment of the electorate. These independents could prove especially crucial because the portion who are undecided (22 percent across the five states) is much higher than the percentage of undecideds among Democrats or Republicans.
In follow-up interviews, several independents favoring Obama said they had cooled on McCain as he adopted more-conservative positions on issues such as taxes during his race for the GOP nomination. "I really used to like John McCain, and I always said I would vote for him if he ran for president. But he is starting to sound an awful lot like George Bush, which scares me to death," said Christine Cleland, a Realtor from Bristow, Va. "When it comes down to it, John McCain is more ready to be president, but I don't trust what he's going to do when he gets there."
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Demographically, the race showed consistent patterns, too. Among white voters, McCain led by double digits except in Colorado, where he was ahead by 9 percentage points. White men usually provided McCain with crushing advantages (of at least 20 percentage points, for instance, in Colorado, Ohio, and Virginia). Even among white women, Obama faced double-digit deficits except in Colorado, where that voting bloc split evenly.
But Obama receives virtually unanimous support from African-Americans in the three surveyed states with substantial black populations--Florida, Ohio, and Virginia. And in Colorado and New Mexico (states where the black population is too small to be reliably polled), he holds commanding leads among Hispanics. In Florida, where Cuban-Americans traditionally lean Republican, Hispanics tilted more narrowly toward Obama.
One measure of the contest's tightness is the close division among voters that McGoldrick identifies as "everyday Americans." These voters--homeowners from all racial and ethnic backgrounds who range in age from 30 to 60 and whose income is between $50,000 and $100,000--split almost evenly in Colorado, Florida, and Ohio, and leaned toward McCain in Virginia and Obama in New Mexico.
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