Obama starts Arizona push far behind Clinton
October 17th, 2007, 10:45 am · Post a Comment · posted by Le Templar
Sen. Barack Obama has been a Democratic presidential candidate for months now. But he’s officially kicking off his Arizona campaign this week. On Monday, he announced the opening of offices in Phoenix and Tucson, the assignment of two people from his national campaign to Arizona, and the hiring of the state Democratic Party’s former political director. On Friday morning, he will appear at his first formal campaign rally in this state on Hayden Lawn at Arizona State University’s Tempe campus.
These moves come not a moment too soon. A new political poll from ASU’s Cronkite journalism school and KAET-TV (PBS) shows Obama getting crushed by Sen. Hillary Clinton among
Arizona voters who already are leaning heavily toward a candidate. We are talking 70 percent for
Clinton and only 18 percent for Obama.
Such numbers would drive most candidates to simply write off Arizona and focus elsewhere. But the same poll shows a huge number of Democrat voters (66 percent) don’t favor a candidate. Obama’s fund raising hasn’t been as strong as Clinton’s. But he has enough money to make play for Arizona’s large undecided pool and, if nothing else, force Clinton to work a little harder as well.
Meanwhile on the Republican side, Sen. John McCain has been enjoying a small resurgence, at least in the early primary states, since his campaign reached rock-bottom this summer. But his single-minded focus on a Iowa-New Hampshire-South Carolina-Michigan strategy means he could wind up losing his home state.
The ASU poll shows Mitt Romney has crept up right behind McCain among committed Republican voters, with 25 percent supporting Romney and 29 percent supporting McCain. That’s within the poll’s margin of error, and pollster Bruce Merrill always has said that means the two candidates are essentially tied.
The pool of undecided Republican candidates was even larger than the Democrats, with 81 percent saying they have no favorite. That’s more bad news for McCain, as Arizona Republicans know him well and a large number might be hoping someone else will prove to be a better choice as their party’s nominee for president.
