Pollster.com

Looks like even in Oregon it is the Independent Voters who are the "battleground." (Obama 44 - McCain 41). And this includes 64% Portland region voters.

Also (according to previous Survey USA polls) the gap is closing and McCain if faring very well.

P.S. The Washington polls have not moved much for either.

It would be interesting to see where they actually polled these people as the state is typically blue for the one and only reason of Portland and perhaps Eugene. Everything else is legitimately republican in the state. The state has a high independent population but Washington State's population has typically been higher in the past.

Check out the cross tabs re: party ID. There's something not quite right here. In their Oregon poll release on June 2, SurveyUSA had party ID at 48 D, 32 R, and 19 I. This latest polls has it 42 D, 41 R and 15 I. While I think the 48 D in the previous poll was probably a bit high, this latest breakdown just doesn't seem to reflect reality. I could see Dem ID in Oregon being about 45%, although 42% wouldn't shock me. But 41% for the GOP seems way to high and the indie numbers in both boths - 15% and 19% - seem pretty low. I'm thinking there is too much of a GOP tilt in this latest release, which likely accounts for the big swing since their poll of just three weeks ago, which I believe had Obama ahead by 9 or 10.

OG - you are correct. But I think the larger question is where are the MI polls? Seriously. Battleground polls will tell us more than National polls or these states where McCain has indicated he will not be competing.

I can't figure out why we are not seeing weekly polls out of MI, OH, FL, VA from Survey USA, PPP, Gallup and Quiniapiac.

Point of Information: Oregon had a closed primary. In Oregon one has to declare party choice when registering to vote... whereas Washington State does not have that requirement. If you wanted to vote in either the recent Democratic or Republican Oregon primary one needed to change their party affiliation to do so to get the ballot. And one can then change back.

Survey USA is no longer polling for an Obama/Clinton ticket? Is that the reason for the loss of women voters no matter who is paired with him whose name isn't Clinton?

McCain's numbers drop sometimes, depending on who he's paired with, but not as consistently as Obama's.

Or is that a result of a name recognition problem for the VP candidates?

If this poll is indeed part of a trend, then Oregon could become a battleground state. McCain may decide to compete... but plenty of time to make that decision... and I am sure they are doing their own internal polling.

OG, you are right. The crosstabs show the skewed sample. No way party affiliation will play out that way in Nov. I'd say actual is Obama +10 right about now in Oregon.

Hopefully, McCain will waste his money there, thinking it has a chance to go red. That would be funny, but I bet his numbers would drop after his parroting the same ole line about "That's not change you can believe in....." while having that creepy agitated smile plastered on his face. Yikes.....

Oregon has a closed primary... which significantly affected voter registration. Notably Independents had to declare either Democrat or Republican to vote in the primary. To vote in the Democratic primary ballot (Obama or Clinton), voters had to switch to Democrat.

"More than 98,000 new voters registered for the May primary. And the Democrats gained more than 115,000 new voters. They've gone from a 38.8 percent share of the electorate at the start of the year to 42.6 percent now. Republicans have now dropped from 35.2 percent to 33.1 percent."

Total New Voters: 73,768
Total Party Switchers: 89,774
Republicans to Democrats: 22,762
Nonaffiliated to Democrats: 40,265

http://blog.oregonlive.com/mapesonpolitics/2008/05/a_first_look_at_oregons_new_vo.html

I do not know how "skewed" the numbers are in this poll... because although many switched parties to be able to vote in the Democratic primary, they may still self-identify Independent and Republican.

I would wait for more polls.

The problem with this poll and why it is so close is because of party affiliation numbers.

Working on the numbers above this post (which I posted a couple of days ago), SurveyUSA was way off in party ID showing Democrats at 42% to Republicans at 41%. Increase that gap from 1 to 9.5 points and you have a net gain of about 7 points in margin for Obama from the 3 shown.

I don't trust SurveyUSA's numbers in Oregon. This seems to be one of the few places that they are really off, and Rasmussen is really on.