Obama keeps his lead in Ohio: Final poll: Obama 52%, McCain 46% The Columbus Dispatch, November 2, 2008
The final Dispatch Poll shows [Barack Obama] with a 6-point lead in Ohio, virtually identical to the 7-point advantage he held a month ago. The survey is one of many in key states across America that indicate Obama is headed toward a win Tuesday that might not be close.
The winner of the last Dispatch Poll before a presidential election has carried the state every time in modern Ohio history, although the final survey was a dead heat four years ago between Sen. John Kerry and President Bush, who won by 2.1 percentage points.
If Obama’s lead of 52 percent to 46 percent in the new poll holds, he would become the first Democrat to win more than 50 percent of the Ohio vote since Lyndon B. Johnson did in 1964.
The survey shows he has sprinted to a 14-point lead among those who already have cast a ballot under Ohio’s new early-voting law, and he is up by a ratio of almost 3-to-1 with voters who registered for the first time this year. Such voters now make up about 10 percent of the electorate.
A key to Obama’s success is the large margins he rolls up among women and voters 34 or younger. In his bid to become the nation’s first black president, he’s winning support from 90 percent of African-Americans.
The Dispatch Poll, like most surveys this year, shows more self-identified Democrats than at any time in the recent past. If they or Obama’s other core supporters—women, blacks and young voters—don’t show up at the polls, McCain conceivably still could pull it off.