Obama Tarnished in the Silver State

Über-lefty poling outfit PPP has President Obama slipping a bit in Nevada:

PPP’s newest Nevada poll finds Barack Obama holding on to a small lead in the state over Mitt Romney, 50-47. Obama’s advantage has been declining over the course of the year. In late March we found him up 8 points, in early June it was down to 6 points, and now the advantage is at 3.

At 50%, Obama is still likely to win the state, which in my mind traded placed with Colorado a month or so ago as the western battleground state least likely to flip for Romney. That said, the trend line can’t be a happy sight for Team Obama.

PPP’s sample was 38% Democrat, 34% Republican, 28% Indy or other. That strikes me as a pretty fair sample for NV, although looking at the swing from 2008 to 2010, Ds might be oversampled a point or three, and Rs slightly under. In 2008, Nevada voters cast just over 50% of their ballots for Democrat congressional candidates, and 55% for Obama. There was some ballot-splitting going on, but not much. In the 2010 congressional races, the ballot split was almost 51% for the GOP candidates and just 45% for the Democrat candidates. It’s safe to say that Nevada is more red today than it was in 2008, but there’s no way of telling just how much more.

Some of the demo breakdowns are also of interest:

Romney’s keeping it close despite Democrats’ registration advantage in Nevada because he’s ahead 51-41 with independents. Romney is also blowing Obama out with white voters, 57-40. Obama leads anyway largely because he has a 67-28 advantage with Hispanics.

This fits in nicely with Jeb Bush’s admonition yesterday to his fellow GOPers:

Speaking at a panel discussion at the Republican National Convention, Bush repeated his frequent warning that the party must change its tone, an admonition he has frequently raised about the party’s hardline position on immigration.

“The future of our party is to reach out consistently to have a tone that is open and hospitable to people who share values,’’ he said, adding “the conservative cause would be the governing philosophy as far as the eye could see … and that’s doable if we just stop acting stupid.”

Yes. That. Exactly.