The goal: Defeating President Bush in November.
The requirement: Turning at least one Red state from 2000 into a Blue state.
How are we doing on that front?
Well, John Kerry and John Edwards are both leading George Bush in New Hampshire.
In a University of New Hampshire Granite State Poll conducted this week, 47 percent of New Hampshire adults said they approve of the job Bush is doing as president, 48 percent disapprove and 5 percent are neutral. That’s down from a high of 71 percent in April and down 9 percentage points since October.
Looking ahead to the November election, 38 percent of likely voters said they would vote for Bush, and 53 percent said they would vote for Democrat John Kerry. In a matchup with Democrat John Edwards, 51 percent said they would vote for Edwards and 37 percent said they would vote for Bush.
Via Kos, who notes that just picking up NH would be insufficient thanks to the reallocation of electoral votes after the 2000 Census. One may also be skeptical of this poll when one recalls that Bush had significant leads over both the then-inevitable Howard Dean and the generic Democrat back in December. But I’ll still take it.
More ominous for the President, perhaps, is this Ohio poll, (PDF) sponsored by the University of Cincinnati, which shows his approval rating in the Buckeye State below 50%.
The latest Ohio Poll finds President Bush’s approval rating remains well below the ratings he received in the early months of 2003. Forty-nine percent of Ohioans approve of the president’s performance, 49 percent disapprove and two percent neither approve nor disapprove.
The president’s approval rating in Ohio continues to be in close proximity to the rating he receives from the nation as a whole. The most recent national survey conducted by The Gallup Organization placed the president’s approval rating at 51 percent.
[…]
In the latest Ohio Poll, 47 percent of Ohioans approve of the way Bush is handling foreign affairs. Forty percent of state residents approve of the president’s handling of the economy.
Ohioans’ ratings of the president’s handling of foreign affairs and the economy are now the lowest of his presidency.
Unfortunately, they don’t take the logical next step and ask the pollees whom they’d vote for in November. (They do have a very nice breakdown of the results by various categories.) I think, though, we can safely conclude that Ohio is not a lock for the President.
Standard caveats apply: it’s early, it’s only one poll, the moon’s ascendancy in Pisces may portend future uncertainty for all Capricorns, etc etc etc.
UPDATE: Angry Bear crunches some job numbers in Ohio, and it ain’t pretty for the President.
Yesterday, I took a quick look at the jobs picture in Ohio (see my blog or The American Street). And it’s not pretty. Ohio has 5.6% less jobs now than when Bush took office.
More starkly, Ohio has 265k less jobs now than 1/1/02; Bush only carried Ohio by 175k votes.
I’m pretty optimistic about Ohio.
AB