cross posted from dailykos
There has been a lot of hyperventilating recently with the new Quinnipiac polls showing McCain gaining strength in several key swing states, including surpassing Obama for the first time in my own state of Colorado.
Breathless MSM outlets have siezed upon this one set of polls to push the false meme that McCain is catching up.
But the MSM reality seems to be an alternate reality. If we take a more holistic look at the situation, another side of the story emerges. Even as the Wall Street Journal tries depserately to zero in on statistically insignificant details of their own new poll to spin reality towards some kind of "good news" for their preferred conservative candidate they can not escape their own poll results.
For hidden within their own editorial are the seeds of a more profound reality.

By nearly every measure and in nearly every region, Obama is leading McCain. There are only a handfull of exceptions, a regional one and two demographic ones.
The only region where McCain leads is the South. Big surprise there, that region is the most reliably republican stronghold in the country and has been for 40 years, yet looking at the margin there is plenty to worry conservatives. McCain is only leading Obama by 6 points 47% to 41% in the South. He loses in every single other region of the country by anywhere from 8 points to as many as 17, and that includes in their special breakout of swing states. Which almost certainly include the handful of states in the Quinnipiac poll.
On the demographic side, again, there are few surprises. McCain leads Obama among seniors aged 65 and up by 10 points 51% to 41%, but he loses every single other demographic group. Admittedly two of these groups are within the statistical margin of error, those being 35-49 and 50-64 age groups where Obama leads by 4 and 5 points respectively. But Obama's lead among younger voters aged 18-34 is a whopping 24 points!
The only other demographic group where McCain leads is among conservatives 73-15%. Big shock there, but even under ideology, Obama beats McCain by 26 points among moderates (55-29%) and of course among liberals (82-12%).
Even the breakdown by income is disappointing to conservatives, where Obama leads in every single income group. There really is nothing in this poll for conservatives to crow about, but it did not stop the WSJ from trying to spin it and bury it by providing a photographic link from the main article which does not mention one word about the obvious implications of the polling data.
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