Quinnipiac has updated its Swing State polling (their label, not mine) in Colorado, Iowa, and Virginia. The results may turn conventional wisdom on its head.
The last time QU surveyed these three states was April, and all the buzz was around Rand Paul holding his own against Hillary Clinton. The Q also polled Clinton against Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, and Marco Rubio (full disclosure: Rubio is my choice for President) – largely finding all three were close or tied with the former Secretary of State in Colorado and Iowa, but 7-8 points back in the Commonwealth.
What a difference three months makes. According to QU pollster Peter Brown, “Against three Republicans, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Secretary Clinton trails in six matchups and is on the down side of too-close-to call in three.”
The three matchups that are statistical dead heats are all in the Commonwealth: and in all three, Mrs. Clinton is indeed on the wrong side – down two to Rubio and down three to Bush and to Walker. In Colorado and Iowa, Clinton is anywhere from -5 to -9, depending upon the state and the opponent.
For months (if not years), Hillary Clinton was considered the 2016 favorite, period, end of paragraph, last page in the book. However, no state has come closer to the national result in the last two elections than Virginia (in fact, the difference between Obama’s 2012 margin in the Commonwealth and that in the nation at large was less than one-twentieth of a percentage point). Virginia has not become a swing state; it has become the swing state…
…and right now it’s showing three Republicans (the only ones polled by QU) with a lead over Clinton (albeit not large enough to be statistically significant).
Of course, there is a lot of ground to cover between now and November, 2016. Indeed, the Democrats can tailor their efforts particularly to Virginia, with the VP slot no less (as Norm noted earlier). However, if Virginia is still the ultra-median state for the national political mood, 2016 could be a lot more interesting than people think.
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