Obama Holds Solid Lead In Swing States

As most of us political junkies know, there is a group of states that will vote for the Democrats in the coming presidential election and another group of states that will vote for the Republicans. Neither group of states has enough electoral college votes to make a candidate the winner. The election will come down to a group of 12 swing states (states that do not traditionally fall into either party's sphere, but could go either way). These swing states for 2012 are Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Colorado, Wisconsin, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia.

As the graphs above (from the Gallup Poll) show, the Republicans have had a small advantage in those swing states since last Fall (and even as late as February, Romney was holding a 2 point lead over the president). That advantage is now gone. The president has now built up a 9 point lead in the 12 swing states (see top chart). And this growing lead was accomplished just in the last month.

At least part of this is due to the Republican "war on women", as other polls have shown that women are abandoning the Republican Party in large numbers -- especially single women and women under the age of 50. But as the bottom chart shows, that is not the Republicans only problem.

Independent voters, both men and women, are moving away from the Republicans and to the president. In January, Romney had a negligible 1 point lead over the president (47% to 46%). But the Republicans (namely Romney) has been losing support steadily among Independents for the last three months. President Obama now has a 9 point lead (48% to 39%) over Romney with swing state Independents.

This does not bode well for the Republicans -- whose actions recently make it seem like they're trying to destroy their own "brand". They cannot win without these Independent swing state voters, and right now more of them are supporting the president everyday.