UM professor: Poll numbers drove McCain from the state

Michael Traugott, professor of communication studies and political science at the University of Michigan, says that poll numbers in the state were the likely reason for Republican presidential nominee John McCain’s evacuation.

“In contemporary presidential campaigns, candidates are evaluating their standing in each state against available funds and choices about how to allocate them,” Traugott told Michigan Messenger. “While Michigan started out as a swing state, the McCain decision suggests that he has polling data that show the Obama lead widening, or else there is another place where they could spend the money with a better chance of winning.”

Campaigns generally do their own internal polling. But there are formulas derived from traditional independent polling that might predict the numbers McCain’s camp was seeing here.

“In the last two presidential elections,” said Traugott, “Michigan has voted at a slightly more Democratic rate than the nation as a whole. In the last two weeks, Obama’s national lead has ticked up to six to eight percentage points. This would suggest that his lead in Michigan would be in the low double digits.”

The conventional definition of a “swing state” is one where opposing candidates are polling less than five percentage points apart.