Obama keeps bounce

Rasmussen shows Obama retaining the lead that he opened up about a week ago after securing the delegates needed for the Democratic nomination. The tracking poll has been “remarkably stable” since then, and stood yesterday (NZ time) at 47% to 40% for John McCain. When ‘leaners’ are added, Obama holds a 5-point advantage, 49% to 44%. Yesterday, Karl Rove noted a 6% average lead for Obama across the polls and opined that this was less than he expected.

Obama also retains an advantage in the Rasmussen Reports Balance of Power Calculator, leading in states with 185 Electoral College votes while John McCain leads in states with 174 votes. When leaners are included, Obama leads 260-240. The Balance of Power Calculator now includes data from FiveThirtyEight.com (which averages polls from other firms and weights them by quality) as well as the latest Rasmussen polls, Rasmussen Markets data, Intrade market data, the aggregated rankings of selected analysts, each state’s voting history, and national trends.

FiveThirtyEight.com (after the 538 votes in the electoral college) itself shows Obama ahead 279 to 260 votes.

Finally, Minnesota continues to be the most interesting Senate contest, and remains competitive (see earlier post). Al Franken was endorsed as Democratic nominee last Saturday. Rasmussen shows incumbent Republican Norm Coleman with a narrow 48% to 45% lead over Franken, much the same as last month. This despite a flare-up over a “racy” Playboy magazine article Democratic nominee Al Franken wrote in 2000. This is encouraging since there is plenty more embarrassing material in Franken’s writings for the Republicans to use.

But former Governor Jesse Ventura — yep, the wrestler — is reportedly tempted to enter the race and Rasmussen finds that this would likely “change things dramatically in Coleman’s favor”. “Stay tuned”.

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Tags: Al Franken, Obama, US elections