A new poll suggests that Barack Obama is pulling even further ahead of John McCain in four states that George W. Bush won in 2004:
With less than two weeks to go ’til Election Day, Barack Obama has held or increased his leads in four key states won by President George W. Bush in 2004 — Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia — while losing ground in West Virginia, according to the latest series of TIME/CNN battleground state polls conducted by Opinion Research Corp. The polls also suggest that the McCain campaign’s recent attempts to link the Democratic nominee to former domestic terrorist William Ayers and the liberal organizing group ACORN (which the GOP accuses of perpetrating voter fraud) are not resonating with most voters.
Obama gained the most ground in North Carolina, where he now leads John McCain among likely voters by 51% to 47%, up four percentage points from earlier this month when a similar poll showed the two tied at 49%. In Nevada, Obama expanded his lead to 51% to 46%, up a percentage point from September. Similarly, in the crucial swing state of Ohio, Obama leads the Arizona senator by a 50% to 46% margin, an increase of one percentage point from his lead earlier this month. In Virginia, a state that increasingly looks to be solidly in Obama’s corner, the Illinois senator remains 10 percentage points ahead 54% to 44%. Still, Obama’s ability to make inroads into red states does appear to have some limits; he lost ground in West Virginia — a state his campaign has said they are just starting to contest — and now trails there by 41% to McCain’s 53%, more than doubling McCain’s September lead of 49% to Obama’s 44%.
So far, there is no sign of any tightening in the polls at the state level.
