Inside the New Battleground Poll

In the grand cosmos of political polling organizations, Quinnipiac is one of the better ones. So it's worth taking a look at its new summer snapshot of three battleground states--Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. The poll was conducted over a full week (July 23-29), about half of which fell during Obama's overseas trip. Quinnipiac's pollsters, Peter Brown and Clay Richards, sat with a group of reporters at a breakfast Thursday morning sponsored by The Christian Science Monitor to discuss their findings. Some of the takeaways (quotes are from the pollsters):

1. "It appears that Sen. Obama's trip to the Middle East did not help him." The polls tightened slightly in all three states since mid-June. Obama has a statistically insignificant two-point lead in Ohio and Florida. (The margin of error is plus or minus 2.8 or 2.7 precent.) Obama has a 7-point lead in Pennsylvania.

2. Voters are shifting on the issues of offshore drilling and nuclear energy. They now are more likely to favor both, and the pollsters say that gas prices are likely the culprit. McCain favors both. Obama opposes offshore drilling and has been less eager than McCain to expand nuclear power. By margins of 27 to 30 points, voters in each of the states think Congress should agree with President Bush and McCain and allow more offshore oil drilling.

3. McCain is better off framing the economic woes as an energy problem, since other economic issues, health care, mortgages, etc., are better for Obama.

4. Voters overwhelmingly believe that the Iraq war was a mistake. But in each of the three states, by a spread of 10 to 20 points, voters "support McCain's plan to keep U.S. troops in Iraq with no fixed date for withdrawal, rather than Obama's plan to set a fixed timetable for withdrawal."

5. The generic ballot and the president's approval rating strongly favor Obama. "[McCain] has no choice if he wants to win but to convince the American people that Obama is not fit [to be president] . . . . He has to run a negative campaign if he wants to win."

6."If George Bush was [polling] in the mid 40s, I am very certain that John McCain would be leading today." (Bush approval polling is at 24 percent in Pennsylvania, 28 percent in Florida and 30 percent in Ohio.)

7. "If John McCain wins Michigan, then he wins Ohio, and therefore he wins the election."

8. "It's the summertime and the polls move all over."