Neck and neck in Midwest battlegrounds

Yet another series of polls suggest the November election will be exceedingly close in key swing states.

The inaugural Big Ten Battleground Poll released tonight found Barack Obama and John McCain statistically tied in seven of the eight Midwestern states (home to the 11 Big Ten universities) included.

Obama has a clear lead in his home state of Illinois, but has a slight edge in Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin -- though all within the margin of error. McCain is ahead in just one state – Indiana -- where he leads by 4 percentage points. The two candidates are tied exactly in Iowa and Pennsylvania.
 
“The close margins in the vast majority of states show that whatever the effects were immediately after the national party conventions, these states have moved back to a highly competitive status, with neither candidates having a clear lead, except in Illinois,” Charles Franklin of the University of Wisconsin and poll director, said in a statement.
 
“We’re seeing the race tighten,” added Victoria DeFrancesco Soto of Northwestern University. “We’re not seeing states change from blue to red or vise versa, but the firm tightening of the race is surprising, because Bush’s approval ratings are so incredibly low. With McCain being in the same party and being linked with Bush, you would expect Obama to have a wider margin.”

The individual surveys of 600 randomly selected registered voters in each state were conducted by phone from Sunday through Wednesday, during daily headlines about the Wall Street meltdown. The poll also included a nationally representative sample of 1,114 respondents, with a margin of error of 3 percentage points. That survey shows Obama with a 1-percentage-point margin over McCain.