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Obama leads McCain by 17 points, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released three weeks to the day before the election. Obama holds leads among blue collar workers, women, white men and Catholics.
Even independents, a core group that McCain must win in order to become the first Republican to win Wisconsin since Ronald Reagan, are breaking for Obama.
Just about the only good news for McCain in Wisconsin is that 14 percent of those polled last week say they may still change their minds before voting.
There were similar results in three other states polled last week by Quinnipiac. Obama was up 9 points in Colorado, 11 points in Minnesota, and 16 points in Michigan — a state McCain pulled out of earlier this month resulting in more staff and resources coming to Wisconsin.
“Those margins may be insurmountable barring a reversal that has never been seen before in the modern era in which polling monitors public opinion throughout the campaign,” said Peter Brown, assistant director of the university’s polling institute.
The new numbers mirror national polls and in other important states McCain needs to win that show him trailing Obama. The poll was done last week both before the presidential debate on Tuesday and after.
Before the debate Obama was up 9 points in Wisconsin but that skyrocketed to 17 in the days after the debate. Their final debate is on Wednesday in New York.
“Any realistic chance of McCain coming from behind depends on scoring a knockout in this week’s last debate,” Brown said. “But given that he has been judged by the electorate to have lost both of the previous face-offs, that would seem to be a very tall order.”
Fifty-eight percent who watched last week’s debate in Wisconsin said they felt Obama did better, compared with 21 percent for McCain.
Particularly troubling for McCain is that Obama leads 52 percent to 36 percent among Wisconsin’s independent voters, who were expected to determine the outcome of the race in this hotly contested state.
Obama led in every major category: women, 59 percent to 33 percent; whites, 52 percent to 39 percent; men, 49 percent to 41 percent; and those without a college degree, 50 percent to 40 percent.
The flailing national economy is also benefiting Obama with 55 percent of those polled saying it is the biggest issue in the race. And a majority say Obama is better able to deal with it — 53 percent to 32 percent.
Just one in four voters in Wisconsin and the other three states said they approved of the job President Bush has been doing. Obama’s campaign has worked hard to tie McCain to Bush and his policies, while McCain has tried to project himself as a maverick who has taken on the president and the Republican Party.
The polls were conducted in partnership with The Wall Street Journal and washingtonpost.com. The pre-debate poll done between Oct. 3 and Oct. 7 of 1,081 randomly selected likely voters in Wisconsin had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. The post-debate poll done between Oct. 8 and Oct. 12 of 1,201 likely voters had a 2.8 percentage point margin of error.
