We note some new CNN/Time polls out this week in several swing states.   What is interesting about these polls is the wording of the question and the fact that the same question was asked twice, with the 2nd time including some of the more well-known 3rd party candidates.

Anyway, to the first issue, to paraphrase, the question asked was “If the election was Obama & Biden vs. McCain and his running mate, who would you vote for?”     I just don’t know how much faith to put in something like this…. when you know the full ticket on one side and not the other.    An argument could be made that knowing the ticket on the Republican side could make it better or worse for them, so not even sure which side would ‘benefit’ from this phrasing… but it just seems an odd poll to take, especially in the middle of the Democratic convention.

The second item was the inclusion of Barr, Nader and McKinney.  Let’s see how that affected the results:

1. CO is 47-46 McCain, and 43-42 McCain with the 3rd party candidates.  No real change there.
2. NV might be the most interesting.   Obama 49-44 head-head, but it is 41-41 with the 3 other candidates.   Not sure if they are all on the ballot there, but that is a state where it could make a difference.
3. NM has Obama 53-40 for Obama and 50-36 with the other 3.  This is a much wider spread than we’ve seen in other NM polls to this point, although Obama seems to be somewhat ahead at this point.
4. PA is 48-43 Obama head-head, but 47-38 including Nadar and Barr (McKinney not on this one).   Nader got 7%, yet McCain lost more ground than Obama, so that is a questionable outcome if we think Nader would be a bigger negative for Obama.