In the latest AP-GfK poll released Wednesday, Obama leads Sen. John McCain 50 to 41 percent in Colorado and 52 to 40 percent in Nevada. Looking at the complete data set, the Obama campaign’s push to turn out early voters appears to be working. Of those surveyed who had already voted, 57 percent picked Obama versus 34 percent for McCain in Colorado, and 56 percent of Nevada early voters chose Obama compared with 33 percent picking McCain.

Early voters in Colorado are favoring Barack Obama by nearly a 2-to-1 margin (Reuters)

Hoping to lock in these swing states turned Democratic leaners, Sen. Barack Obama is headed to Colorado and Nevada for the second weekend in a row. Some are speculating Obama’s real reason for heading back west the weekend before the election is to stump in McCain’s home state. The latest polls show McCain’s once commanding lead falling to the low single digits, in some cases evaporating into the margin of error. For comparison, Obama enjoys a 20+ point lead in his home state of Illinois.

Considering McCain won reelection to the U.S. Senate with 77 percent of the vote in 2004 and 69 percent in 1998, to be running neck and neck in a statewide election represents a huge reversal of fortune for the Arizona senator even if he manages to carry the state on November 4.

Purged Voters In Colorado Can Cast (Provisional) Ballots

The Colorado Secretary of State’s office has settled a lawsuit brought by voters’ rights groups and the SEIU over what they claimed were illegal purges from the voter roles. The agreement allows the suspect voters to cast provisional ballots and essentially jump to the front of the line when verifying provisional ballots after the election.

“Voters on the list shall be presumed to be eligible and their ballots will be counted,” the agreement says, according to the Denver Post. “Only upon a showing by clear and convincing evidence that a voter is not eligible shall a provisional ballot be rejected by the county.”

The two parties reached the out of court agreement Wednesday, but it looked like the presiding judge was leaning toward the plaintiffs.

“I think there are places where the state went out of bounds on removal of these names,” Senior U.S. District Judge John L. Kane Jr. said, according to the Post.

The New York Times first reported on the purges in Colorado and other states earlier this month, and soon after election officials began disputing the claims in the story.

Before the agreement in Colorado was announced, alt-weekly Denver Westword featured an online interview with BBC journalist Greg Palast who co-wrote a Rolling Stone article on Republican voter suppression tactics.

Palast claims former Secretary of State Donetta Davidson, a Republican, and her Democratic successor Mike Coffman purged 19.4 percent of Colorado’s registered voters since 2004.

“Are you really telling me that one in five voters are fraudulent, illegal voters who are trying to steal the election?” Palast said in Westword. “No, they’re not. Is the state really rife with fraudulent voters? No, it’s not. It’s a complete, absolute con, and they know it. Davidson and Mike Coffman have been running a purge-and-block operation.”

A cutout of Barack Obama at a Mexican Independence Day celebration in Denver last month (Getty Images)

New Mexico took center stage over the weekend on a 20-minute segment — New Voters in the New West — on NOW in PBS. Reporter Maria Hinojosa calls New Mexico “the battleground of battleground states” as she follows both campaigns’ efforts in the state. The report focuses on young voters and Latinos.

In 2004, Republicans won the state by just shy of 6,000 votes. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, who campaigned for Sen. John Kerry in 2004 and is trying to deliver the state in November for Sen. Barack Obama told Hinojosa, “Senator Kerry is still mad at me.”

Obama has 39 field offices in the state compared to 10 for McCain and 6 for Kerry last cycle. The PBS report tries to run against conventional wisdom, following around a group of college-aged McCain supporters and highlighting lingering concerns among the usually Democratic-leaning Latino community.

“It’s risky for Obama’s campaign to assume that we’re going to vote Democrat just because we’re registered Democrat,” community activisit Arturo Uribe said. Uribe, who is seen encouraging community members to register to vote but not backing a candidate in the report, said race, religion, and other factors mean Obama can’t take the Latino community for granted. He also said some Latinos worry that with an African-American president, blacks would become the “preferred minority.”

“I’d rather go with the old man,” one middle aged Latino man told a group of Obama canvassers. “He’s got the experience.”

In a poll of New Mexico voters conducted last week for the Albuquerque Journal, “62 percent of Hispanics surveyed favored Obama, while 17 percent backed McCain and 21 percent were undecided.” Brian Sanderoff, president of the firm that conducted the poll, estimated that Bush carried up to 38 percent of the Latino vote in the state in 2004. Among all likely voters polled,Obama is ahead of McCain 45 to 40 percent.

In Colorado, where Latinos are expected to account for more than 10 percent of voters for the first time and could thus determine who carries the state, a recent poll has Obama ahead of McCain among Latino voters 68 to 26 percent.

The Obama campaign’s registration and get out the vote efforts are bolstered by nonprofit groups that target low income communities, including many that are predominately Latino. The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), a coalition of groups targeting low income families, announced today that it exceeded goals in Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico in its voter registration efforts with Project Vote.

A subset of Latinos being courted are new citizens. Jeffrey Passel, a senior demographer with the Pew Hispanic Center, told the AP, “In places where the election is very close, they make all the difference in the world,” New citizens, like other first time voters, are excited to cast their first ballot and tend to be good ambassadors in their communities, either for particular candidates or simply to promote the importance of civic engagement.

“We can make the difference in these elections,” Arturo Munoz, a Salvadoran native who became a U.S. citizen in August, told the AP through a translator. “If more Hispanics vote, the future president will have to address topics important to them.”

VP Debate Editorials and Columns in the Battle for the West

Denver Post: “Palin had fun. But her frequent dependence on cheerful phrases like ‘darn it’ or ‘doggone it’ and her avoidance of specifics and entire lines of questions will no doubt keep her critics on the attack… Palin’s biggest task is convincing undecided voters that she could lead should she have to, and it’s hard to see whether her performance, as clean as it was, held enough substance to sway them.”

Las Vegas Review-Journal: “Gov. Palin actually looked like she was enjoying herself, especially as the evening wore on, whereas Sen. Biden, as the evening progressed, looked more like a scowling sourpuss…if Americans are looking for a fresh new face, someone who can connect with ‘Main Street,’ Gov. Palin’s performance — perhaps she ‘lost on points’ — might help push the Republican ticket toward victory.”

Las Vegas Sun: “[Palin] smiled a lot and certainly was folksy, peppering her comments with phrases such as ‘I’ll betcha’ and ‘heck of a lot.’ There is nothing wrong with a down-to-earth demeanor — we wish more politicians were like that. At the same time, however, folksiness can’t substitute for substance. The Bush presidency is a case in point.”

Pueblo Colorado Chieftan columnist Chuck Green: “Palin showed… she could stand toe-to-toe with one of the Senate’s best. But she didn’t display an impressive grasp of issues and didn’t display a great sense of confidence. Biden projected confidence and a wide range of knowledge on several issues, but he misstated the facts or outright lied about the historical record at least six times during the 90-minute production. He might look like a statesmanlike U.S. senator and exude confidence, but Americans still can’t believe what comes out of his mouth.”

Reno Gazette-Journal: “Can we please bring back the final ‘g’ in words ending in ‘-ing’? Palin seems to drop it — as in ‘I was talkin’ to some soccer moms’ — to show that she’s one of the folks, but Sen. Barack Obama does it, too, and so does seemingly every TV newscaster in Reno. That may be OK in casual talk among friends, but it has no place in formal speechmaking… Just as we expect candidates to pronounce the name of our state right, we should expect them to pronounce ‘-ing’ right. It may not be folksy, but it is presidential.”

Rocky Mountain News columnist Mike Littwin: “In any case, even if Biden won in the instant-polls, Palin did well enough in memorizing talking points and occasionally winking that the McCain campaign is sending her immediately to Colorado… McCain probably can’t lose Colorado – where he’s trailing in the polls – and win the election.”

Santa Fe New Mexican columnist Bill Stewart: “[Palin] was folksy and friendly, deflecting questions for which she was unprepared… Palin connects on a personal level. It is probably her greatest political strength. It is one of Biden’s strengths as well. He teared up when talking about the challenge of being a single father following the tragic deaths of his first wife and his daughter.”

Civil War Over Political Relevance in NV

“If we are not careful, the North may become the center of Nevada’s political universe,” warns the Las Vegas Sun’s Jon Ralston in an appeal to his fellow southern Nevadans. “Washoe County may go Democratic and Reno already has, perhaps making the North decisive. This cannot stand. The South must rise again!”

Ralston points to the recent stories in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times with Washoe County datelines as evidence for the shift in influence. The little swing county that could may be the sexier story for national media, but Las Vegas’s Clark County still accounts for more than two-thirds of all registered voters in the state.

Perhaps that’s why eight of Sen. Barack Obama’s 16 field offices in the state are in Clark County. For comparison, Sen. John McCain’s campaign has nine locations — some of them shared space with local GOP offices — and 2004 Democratic candidate John Kerry maintained two offices four years ago, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “Clearly, Obama had a head start on building grass-roots support,” Reno-based Republican consultant and lobbyist Pete Ernaut told the Review-Journal. “McCain’s campaign has been playing catch-up.”

Observations

On Saturday, the New York Times offered snapshot portraits of five cities being heavily courted by both campaigns; three are in Battle for the West states. They turned to local reporters or columnists, not Times staff writers, to file the reports.

Pueblo, Colorado

“Pueblo is traditionally a Democratic town, though conservative Democrat… McCain is looking for those disenchanted independents, he’s looking for those Hillary voters, he’s looking for Hispanic voters. Everyone is aware of the long-held tensions between African-Americans and Hispanics; he’s looking for whatever Hispanics he can pick up.” – Peter Roper, political reporter, The Pueblo Chieftain

Elko, Nevada

“George Bush might not be our president if not for Elko, which proves beyond a shadow of any doubt that every vote truly does count. But this election could be Elko’s last hurrah… Clearly, Elko County with its huge conservative base will carry the day for McCain-Palin, but by how much? Enough to offset Obama’s doubtless victory in Clark County, home to Las Vegas where Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than 100,000? I wouldn’t bet my paycheck on that one.” – Doug McMurdo, associate editor, Elko Daily Free Press

Las Cruces, New Mexico

“Las Cruces has always been a Democratic-leaning community, but socially conservative on values like guns and religion… I have read media accounts of Hispanic voters being reluctant to vote forObama, or any black candidate. If that sentiment exists, I haven’t seen it.” – Walt Rubell, managing editor, Las Cruces Sun-News

The presidential campaigns and the press have focused a good deal of energy on Latino voters, especially in western states where they could pay a pivotal role. But what about our second largest group of immigrants?

Asians make up 5 percent of the United States. While the largest Asian populations are in the solid Democratic states of New York and California, there are 180,000 in Virginia, a state that could go either way in November. Nevada, Florida, Colorado and Ohio have significant Asian populations as well.

Unfortunately, as News 21 reporter Mira Jang found in her report, “Asians Shading Blue,” polling data on this group is hard to find. One small poll taken in June showed Asian voters supporting Obama 68 to 27, but these results are not completely reliable. Still, Jang concluded that Asians are shifting toward the Democrats.

A new poll taken in New Jersey also shows Asians supporting Obama, this time by 65 percentage points, even larger than his 40 point lead among Latinos in that state. The Press of Atlantic City, which commissioned the survey, does not account for this wide margin, but it does characterize it as “a small sample.”

But there is good, if mysterious news. On Monday, a coalition that includes UC Berkeley, UC Riverside, Rutgers, and the University of Southern California will announce the results of what it is calling the 2008 National Asian American Survey. So far, they are not giving away the results, but they do say it is “the most comprehensive survey to date on Asian Americans and politics,” with a sample size of 4,000.

Stay tuned to News 21 for updates, and meanwhile, feel free to guess what the results will be.

(Photo by Mira Jang)

Sen. John McCain has held slim, within-the-margin-of-error edges in Nevada polls since the GOP convention. But Jon Ralston writes today in the Las Vegas Sun that “despite the history and some of the intangibles… [Nevada] is starting to lean to Obama, if ever so slightly.” Ignoring the (statistically meaningless) polls, the numbers game favors Sen. Barack Obama. Ralston notes the voter registration trends: George W. Bush bested John Kerry by 21,000 votes in 2004 when Republicans held a 5,000 voter advantage in registrations, but today Democrats command a 76,000 lead in registered voters; Clark County Democrats have more than doubled their registration edge since 2004, leading Republicans by 100,000; and Republicans in the media’s new favorite swing county in a swing state, Washoe County, have seen their 17,000-person advantage dwindle to 3,000. Turning out Latino voters and winning over conservative Democrats could still pose a problem, as could making inroads in rural communities.Ralston asks if Obama’s continued effort to reach the seemingly unreachable is smart politicking or a “fool’s errand,” using Obama recent visit to rural Elko, Nevada, as a case in point. “Elko is 2-to-1 for the GOP in registration, and Bush beat Kerry 4-to-1. So if Obama can make it there — that is, cut his losses to 2-to-1 — he can make it anywhere.”

But don’t count out McCain just yet. “If Barack Obama rented a house and lived there from now until Election Day, he wouldn’t move that county by five points,” Pete Ernaut, a Republican consultant who grew up in Elko, told the Las Vegas Sun. New volunteers shot up from a few hundred to more than a thousand a week following Gov. Sarah Palin landing the VP slot on the Republican ticket and her recent stops in the state, Rick Gorka, the McCain campaign’s regional communications director, told Bloomberg News. And as for the Republicans’ disadvantage with statewide voter registration, Sue Lowden, chairwoman of the Nevada Republican Party isn’t worried, telling Bloomberg, “We have a huge number of Democrats who are part of our `Democrats for McCain,’ so the numbers this time around as far as registration do not mean as much to us.”

Diddy For President

Is it just me, or does the Obama drawing from a recent Maureen Dowd column look more like Sean “Puffy” Combs than the Illinois senator?

New Mexico: Leaning Left

With polls in the last week showing Obama up in New Mexico by 7 to 11 points, CQPolitics.com is moving the former tossup state from “Leans Democrat” to “Democrat Favored.” Obama continues to campaign aggressively in the state, with a particular emphasis on reaching out to Latino voters. But McCain won’t give up without a fight, outspending Obama on TV ads in the state the week following the GOP convention $214,000 to $155,000. McCain should benefit when the NRA comes out shooting this week with anti-Obama ads aimed at voters in New Mexico, Colorado, and Pennselvania.

But in the state with the highest concentration of Latinos, the controversy surrounding comments made by a local GOP leader — basically saying McCain will benefit since Latinos won’t vote for a black man — can’t help McCain-Palin’s cause. Bernalillo County GOP Chairman Fernando C de Baca was quoted in the BBC’s “Talking America” blog saying, “The truth is that Hispanics came here as conquerors… African-Americans came here as slaves. Hispanics consider themselves above blacks. They won’t vote for a black president.” Despite calls for his resignation by the state GOP chairman and Republican Sen. PeteDomenici, de Baca insisted the quote was taken out of context.

Obama Terrorist T-Shirt Update

The “liberal loons” that head up Aurora Public Schools insist they weren’t quashing free speech when they suspended 11-year-old Daxx Dalton for wearing a homemade t-shirt emblazoned with “Obama – A Terrorist’s Best Friend.” Superintendent John Barry told the Rocky Mountain News the shirt only became an issue when it caused a disruption. “A number of kids came to a number of teachers expressing that they were upset. There was shouting and yelling,” Barry said. He also noted that Dalton’s sister also wore an anti-Obama shirt but since there was no disruption, she was not reprimanded. In the article, Dalton acknowledged the shirt was disruptive, but doesn’t think he should have been suspended. When an African-American student confronted Dalton and accused him of just not wanting a black president, “I agreed with that because that would be the only thing that made him shut up,” Dalton said. “But I’m not racist.”

“Students have a constitutional right to express their opinions about politics, and this t-shirt was not vulgar or anything other than a political statement,” said E. Christopher Murray, president of the New York chapter of the Civil Liberties Union, in an email to the Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog. Conservatives may find themselves conflicted should a group like the ACLU take up this case. “I agree with the message [on the shirt], but I agree with the school keeping discipline too, but it’s still a controversial free speech argument. I wonder if the ACLU would break from their usual absolutist opinion or sit on their hands if asked to defend this one,” read a blog post discussing the controversy on the Stop The ACLU blog, whose logo refashions the “C” as a communist sickle and hammer.

As goes Colorado, so goes the nation? Last week, political analyst and Roll Call columnist Stuart Rothenberg called Colorado the “one state that is most likely to determine who will be the next occupant of the White House.” The latest Quinnipiac University poll, whose results were released today, have Sen. Barack Obama up 4 points over Sen. John McCain, 49 to 45 percent among the 1,418 likely voters surveyed. The poll found the Illinois senator up 55 to 40 percent among women, 68 to 26 percent among Latinos, and 52 to 42 percent with voters aged 35 to 54 in Colorado. Young voters, those 34 and under, were evenly split with 48 percent supporting each candidate. McCain leads 49 to 42 percent with men, 51 to 44 percent among whites, 47 to 46 percent with voters over 55. So much for Obama getting the youth vote and McCain the geriatrics.

A survey of 742 rural voters across 13 battleground states — including CO, NM, and NV — showed Sen. John McCain ahead 51 to 41 percent among rural voters. With rural voters expected to be crucial to an Obama victory in any of these states, Republicans will continue to paint Obama as an effete elite out of touch with small town America values (see: the “Bittergate” scandal ) and hope that their VP pick Gov. Sarah Palin can land those votes, in part by ratcheting her up as a sort of Anti-Obama.

Republican political consultant William Greener, who helped conduct the survey, said McCain will need a wider margin among rural voters, but noted that George W. Bush polled similarly among rural voters 2 months out and ultimately built a 20 point lead among rural voters by election day. For their part, Obama and his surrogates continue to reach out to these voters, with the candidate making stops in Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado last week.

Undecided rural voters may be hesitant to go with Obama, but that doesn’t mean they’ll automatically line up for McCain because of Palin, either. Rural Westerners “think with their brains and not with their guns,” said Jonathan Thompson in High Country News, who equated the Alaska governor to Dick Cheney with lipstick, someone who would be a “drill-happy, gun-slingin’, hard-liner, rural Western vice president with ties to the oil industry.”

Despite early speculation that Palin on the GOP ticket could change the dynamic in the West, “Palin power doesn’t seem to have led to the massive Western swing toward McCain that some expected,” wrote Robert Saldin, a political science professor at the University of Montana. But even if Palin proves less than convincing with independents, she clearly has mobilized the base of the Republican party who were lukewarm toward McCain. “Enthusiasm in this mostly conservative county [El Paso County] may give the state to John McCain; apathy will hand it to Barack Obama,” read an opinion piece in the Colorado Springs Gazette. Many of the religious conservatives in Colorado Springs, home of Focus on the Family and several of the nation’s largest mega-churches, may have stayed home rather than vote for McCain, but Palin looks to get them out to the polls.

With registration deadlines looming across the country, on the ground activists for both parties are focusing on getting people signed up to vote. Colorado’s deadline to register lands first on October 6; citizens in Nevada and New Mexico have until October 14 to register.

The most recent figures available show Republicans still have a slight voter registration edge over Democrats in Colorado, though they’re numbers have dwindled since 2004. Current registration numbers for Colorado (compared with November 2004 figures): Republicans 1,029,062 (-90K), Democrats 955,428 (+13K), Unaffiliated 1,022,575 (-2K).

Democrats have taken the lead in registrations from Republicans in Nevada since 2004, though the most recent polls have McCain with a small lead in the state. Current registration numbers for Nevada (compared with November 2004 figures): Republicans 489,802 (+48), Democrats 565,855 (+127),  Non-Partisan 200,959 (+3K). In rural Washoe County, seen as a bellwether for the state and where News21 fellow Amada Becker chronicled the changing political landscape earlier this summer, Democratic registration is just 3,000 behind Republicans, the county voter registrar reported last week.

New Mexico Democrats outnumber Republicans 3 to 2, and some analysts have moved the state from “toss up” to “leans Democratic.” But the Democrats enjoyed a similar advantage in registrations in 2004 yet Bush still managed to carry the state by 6,000 votes, and current polls suggest Obama will need to work to win the Land of Enchantment. Current registration numbers for New Mexico (compared with November 2004 figures): Republicans 360,513(+1K), Democrats 563,103 (+15), Decline to State 168,930 (+4K).

With Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico still competitive — and perhaps because up to 50 percent of voters in theses three states are expected to vote before November 4 — it should come as no suprise that Western airwaves contine to be flooded with political ads. The Denver-metro area ranked first in the nation, with 1,360 TV ads from September 6-13 according to a study by the University of Wisconsin Advertising Project. Las Vegas came in third with 1,215 ads. Albequerqe and Reno also made the top ten, with 1,012 and 1,004 ads, respectively.

(Image source: MyFOXColorado.com)

Asian Americans make up the smallest racial group in the country, comprising about 5 percent (14.4 million) of the population. Yet they are the fastest growing sector, rising by 3 percent from 2004 to 2005, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. With continuing immigration from Asia–especially China, India, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Korea–and as Asian Americans become more politically engaged, how will they affect American politics?

The upcoming presidential election presents a valuable opportunity to understand how Asian Americans perceive the candidates and how they will vote as a group or as individuals. In the California primary, we know that Asian Americans backed Clinton 3-1, although it’s not clear why Clinton picked up the Asian vote and why Obama didn’t. There are very few polls–both national and local–on Asian Americans and political participation and a dearth of stories on Asian American voters.

However, extensive reporting on the ground from regions such as Southern California will help tell their stories. Later this month, I will report from Los Angeles for two weeks. By the end of July, I will complete a multimedia project that explores key aspects of the Asian American vote for News21.