Howard Dean has some serious work to do in Wisconsin if he's going to win there on Feb. 17 and keep his candidacy alive. The latest Badger poll shows Dean in fourth place. Kerry has 35 percent, Clark 11 percent, Edwards 9 percent and Dean 8 percent. Also in the Badger poll was this good news for Democrats: 53 percent (of Dems, GOP and Independents combined) rated Bush's job performance as only "fair" or "poor," and 54 percent said they would like to see "someone else in the White House" after the Nov. 2 election.
The question in Michigan is not "Will Kerry win?" tomorrow's caucuses -- it's "by how much?" Pollster John Zogby has Kerry with 47 percent, Dean with 10 percent, and everyone else in single digits. The Detroit News puts Kerry at 56 percent and everyone else in single digits. Kerry's mighty lead apparently has left Michigan peeved that the state was cheated out of a real contest, the News says.
Zogby notes that, even if Michigan doesn't give us an exciting nail biter, voter sentiment there can provide a window into Kerry's appeal. "He has wide support from every sub-group. While the top issue is clearly the economy, electability is the major factor driving Kerry's lead. He by far and away trumps the other candidates in this category," Zogby writes in his Michigan polling analysis.
The only public poll of Washington state voters ahead of tomorrow's caucuses was released Wednesday by pollster Stuart Elway, but the sample is so small as to not be that reliable. Still, Elway says the survey of 205 Democrats illustrates how Dean's fortunes have changed in Washington since December. In the poll Elway conducted on Jan. 27-29, 40 percent of Democrats supported Kerry, compared with 13 percent for Dean.
The AP has a poll showing Bush's public support plummeting nationally in the last month, especially among older voters, political independents and people in the Midwest. "And for the first time, more voters in this poll's two years of tracking the question said they would definitely vote against Bush than said they would definitely vote for him," the AP writes.
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