American Thinker- Print Article

More good polling news for the McCain campaign as the numbers start to roll in showing that his pick of Sarah Palin may have been the masterstroke of the election.

The vital demographic of white women have surged to John McCain since the GOP convention ended last week:

Republican presidential candidate John McCain has gained huge support among white women since naming Sarah Palin as his running mate and now leads Democrat Barack Obama among those voters, according to a survey published on Tuesday.

The Washington Post/ABC News poll found that much of McCain's surge in the polls since the Republican National Convention is attributable to the shift in support among white women.

The race for the White House is now a virtual tie, with Obama at 47 percent support of registered voters and McCain at 46 percent, the poll found.

Before the Democratic National Convention in late August, Obama held an 8 percentage point lead among white women voters, 50 percent to 42 percent, but after the Republican convention in early September, McCain was ahead by 12 points among white women, 53 percent to 41 percent, the poll found.

And Rasmussen has released some battleground state polls that also hold good news for McCain:

Rasmussen Reports conducted five state telephone surveys in partnership with Fox News Channel on September 7, 2008. The surveys were conducted in Colorado, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. A total of 500 Likely Voters were interviewed in each state using the Rasmussen Reports automated telephone survey methodology (see http://www.rasmussenreports.com/ for details).

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A collective look at all five states confirms the overall sense that the race for the White House is very competitive and that these five states will be considered key battlegrounds. Four of the five state polls show the candidates within 3 points of each other. The sole exception-Ohio-shows McCain with a 51% to 44% advantage and also remains competitive.

Comparing these results with pre-convention polling shows very little net change despite all the hoopla and hype of the convention season. McCain is doing a bit better in Ohio than before the two conventions while Obama has gained some ground in Colorado. There was virtually no change in the other states.

The good news from Ohio as well as the numbers showing McCain very close in Pennsylvania must be very worrying to the Obama campaign. They have already spent millions of dollars in those two states and have virtually nothing to show for it.

Still a long way to go but if someone had told me 3 months ago that McCain and Obama would be this close I would have laughed in their faces.

McCain makes huge gains among women voters