While exit polls confirm that blacks voted for Obama by a near 95-5 margin, this support is all but maxed out.  For instance, in
2008 Obama beat John McCain in Philadelphia, which contains the state’s biggest concentration of black voters, by a margin of 458,784 votes due to record high turnout among minorities.  By comparison, former presidential candidate John Kerry beat George Bush by 412,106 votes in Philadelphia in the 2004 presidential race, which means Obama got only 46,678 MORE votes than Kerry did [against Bush].  Since Obama won the state by 603,000 votes, this suggests optimized turnout from minorities is worth about 50,000 more votes and therefore not essential to his victory.

Instead, Obama’s vote margins in the 10 to 20 fastest growing counties are where he really made the biggest gains.  A comparison of Obama/McCain results with Kerry/Bush results from 2004 shows that in all ten of the fastest growing counties Obama did an average of seven points BETTER [against McCain] than John Kerry did [against Bush]. These counties in ranking order from biggest
to smallest population gains include Chester, York, Montgomery, Lancaster, Berks, Lehigh, Monroe, Northampton, Bucks and Cumberland.  In South Central PA, many people are moving in from Maryland to escape overpriced housing.  In the Pocono’s, it’s transplants from New Jersey and New York seeking lower property taxes and a better quality of life.  In the Southeast, people are moving further away from Philadelphia and settling in the “exurbs” of Lancaster, Chester and  Berks Counties.  Our poll show what these new residents have in common is that they are not straight ticket Republican or Democratic voters, but rather “swing” voters who split their tickets in most elections, in which case they become target-rich territories.  What perhaps most don’t realize is that these 10 counties account for more than 1 in 3 total votes cast in a statewide election, or sixty percent when added to the growth counties ranking 11 through 20.

Lancaster County is a good example because it is the 4^th fastest growing county with a net gain of 48,000 more people according to the 2010 census.  Although McCain beat Obama in Lancaster County, Obama managed to shave 44,078 votes off of McCain’s vote margin when compared with George Bush’s 71,263-vote margin in 2004.  This is huge because it means this single county
by itself almost completely negates the 46,678 ADDITIONAL votes Obama managed to win out of Philadelphia due to record black turnout in 2008.

To extrapolate this even further, when looking at all ten of the fastest growing counties combined, the cumulative number of votes Obama either shaved off of McCain’s margin (in counties like Lancaster and others) or votes Obama improved over Kerry’s margins in counties he and Kerry both won (e.g., Montgomery, Lehigh and Bucks) is 246,664, or almost a quarter of a million!  So had McCain simply stopped Obama from making gains in these ten counties, and adding these nearly one quarter million
more votes to his tallies, McCain would have gotten 48.5% of the total vote in 2008, while Obama’s percentage would have fallen to 50.4%.  If McCain could have added even more votes by stopping some of Obama’s gains in other growth counties like Franklin, Centre and Dauphin (which rank 11^th, 12^th and 13^th in growth), we are now talking about a McCain victory and an Obama defeat.

The good news for Republicans is that almost all of these top growth counties have proven they will vote Republican both at the top of the ticket and down ballot.  Many proved this the case when they voted for both Corbett for governor in 2010, and at the same time elected Republicans to the state legislature in districts that just a few years ago elected Democrats.  So if the GOP can be more
competitive in these top 10 to 20 growth counties it could marginalize any impact that higher minority turnout will have on the President’s margins in Philadelphia and other urban centers.  It is these growth counties therefore, and not minority turnout in Philadelphia, that represent the real prize in next year’s presidential race.

Consider the drubbing of bad news that surfaced just in the last week of May.   The stock market dropped 297 points in a single day, its biggest one-day drop since June of last year.  With this decline the Dow has now fallen 5 consecutive weeks, the longest losing streak since 2004.  Consumer confidence in May as a result plummeted.   Housing prices have fallen to 2002 levels, and are even lower in markets like Nevada and Florida.   Manufacturing output saw its biggest one month slowdown since 1984.  The jobs report on Friday, June 3^rd revealed only 54,000 jobs were added in May (following only 83,000 in April), the fewest in 12 months, and pushing the nation’s unemployment rate back up to 9.1%.

All this forecasting has led economists to downgrade their otherwise sanguine projections for second, third and fourth quarter growth.  The economy grew at an anemic 1.8% in the first quarter, but was expected to grow more robustly in coming months.  

So it’s no wonder voters are taking this out on President Obama.  According to our newest poll conducted May 30 to June 2 (also available for Premium Members), only 41% approve of the job the President is doing, compared with 48% who disapprove.  This represents a further decline from his 45% job approval rating in March – and a sobering finding when you consider that the President has been “riding high” on his job approval ratings on a nationwide basis due to the positive “bump” he received after successfully finding and killing Osama Bin Laden.   So what I’m basically saying is that the bleak economic news has virtually “erased” any positive bump the president might otherwise have had.

 In the poll, by a staggering 50-16 margin voters told us they think the economy in the state is actually WORSE today than it was 12 months ago, which is significant when you consider that the recession technically ended in 2009. And among those who say the economy is doing worse, only 31% approve of the job Obama is doing, while 61% disapprove – a 2:1 margin.  Moreover, while 43% said the president deserves to be reelected, 50 percent or 1 in 2 voters say it is time to give a new person a chance.

So the economic landscape has everything to do with Obama’s reelection prospects.  In 2008, John McCain was “in the hunt” to win Pennsylvania as late as mid-September.  But all this changed on September 22, 2008 when the Dow dropped 777 points in a single day following the collapse of Lehman Brothers.  Congress balked on the first TARP vote the preceding week.  After the bottom fell out of the economy, “swing” and undecided voters concluded Bush, McCain & Co. were to blame and broke for Obama by a 2:1 margin starting in late September and continuing into October.  McCain never regained the lead in our polling, and it became the official beginning of the end for him.

So next year the presidential race could hinge on how these same “swing” voters break on the economy. The New York Times recently opined that no president since F.D.R. has ever been reelected when the unemployment rate on Election Day topped 7.2 percent.  And no economist in his right mind is projecting that the unemployment rate will fall to anywhere near this by the time the presidential race heats up.  So this means the pace of the recovery will have a direct impact on the President’s prospects for reelection.  And all this points to another close election for President in 2012.

http://www.pachamber.org/www/news/press_releases/2011/Poll%20Pennsylvanians%20overwhelmingly%20support%20lawsuit%20abuse%20reform.php

Nearly two-thirds of Republicans (62 percent) support a severance levy, while slightly less than a third (32 percent) oppose it, according to the poll of 1,200 registered voters.

Unsurprisingly, support for an extraction tax runs highest in Gasland, with 73 percent of northwestern residents and 72 percent of northeastern residents favoring it. Voters in the socially moderate southeast also support a tax, with 73 percent registering their support.

The survey, done in conjunction with New York-based Global Strategy Group, was conducted Feb. 8-17 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.83 percentage points.

Other findings:

Two-thirds of voters, including 50 percent of Republican respondents, favor preserving state forest land and not opening it to drilling. The administration is currently weighing whether to lift a Rendell-era executive order barring new leases in state forests.

Gov. Tom Corbett opposes the tax. But he said last week that he might, under certain circumstances, be willing to entertain the idea of a local impact fee for counties and municipalities affected by drilling.

Click here to read the full blog entry http://www.mcall.com/news/nationworld/pennsylvania/mc-politics-as-usual-032711-20110328,0,5524133,full.story