SurveyUSA Follow-Up: Obama's Advantage

A number of people have begun waying in on the results of today's SurveyUSA survey electoral vote match-ups. Obama wins by 22 electoral votes, while Clinton wins by only 14. More importantly though, as Chris Bowers from Open Left points out:

Despite seemingly similarity in their performance against McCain, this breakdown shows real differences between Obama and Clinton in the general election. Against Obama, McCain's "solid" and "lean" states only add up to 123, while Obama's add up to 229. In a matchup against Clinton, the "solid" and "lean" states are of equal size: 201 for McCain, and 203 for Clinton. In other words, while McCain and Clinton appear evenly matched, McCain is only able to keep it close against Obama by running up a series of narrow wins in the toss-up states.

Markos Moulitsas from Daily Kos also analyzed the results, and noted that:

It's amazing how many non-swing states will suddenly be, well, swing states this year, like Texas, South Carolina, and North Carolina. Some of these states become competitive depending on the candidate, like Arkansas and Tennessee for Clinton, and just about everything west of the Mississippi for Obama.

… In all, Obama outperforms Clinton in 33 states: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

From the beginning, Barack has understood the importance of competing in every state, and we've built a broad base of support across the country. The result is a clear advantage in November's race, with a real possibility of redrawing the electoral map.

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