Nov 3, 2008

NY Times: McCain finds hope in Philadelphia

A New York Times report at the link below is titled, McCain Camp finds some hope in Philadelphia.

If Senator John McCain defies the polls and wins Pennsylvania, it will be in part because of voters like Harry Klemash, 67, a Democrat who supported Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in the primary but is still not comfortable with Senator Barack Obama.

"Obama has too many socialist policies, and he doesn’t have enough experience," Mr. Klemash, a retired pressman, said Sunday as he walked his miniature poodle in Marconi Park in South Philadelphia, a largely white, Catholic, ethnic neighborhood.

The chairman of the state Republican Party said they can carry four to six wards this year. Four years ago they carried none.

In South Philadelphia, McCain signs have cropped up in the windows of the low brick houses and on the postage-stamp front yards.

Obama is likely to significantly underperform Kerry and Gore in those white row-house wards.

In 2004, Senator John Kerry, the Democrat, won about 80 percent of the vote in Philadelphia, beating President Bush by 412,000 votes here. But Mr. Kerry won the state by only 144,000 votes.

Obama has a double digit lead in Pennsylvania so why is Mr. Biden planning on making appearances in the state the last day before the elections? Does the Obama campaign suspect flawed polling data?

Link