Rasmussen shows Obama defeating McCain 50-38 in Nevada with 9% preferring “some other candidate” and 2% “not sure.”  (For comparison, Clinton trails McCain 40-49 in the same poll.)  Nevada is one of the states Rasmussen lists as a “toss-up,” but if these numbers can be believed it isn’t much of a toss-up in an Obama v. McCain contest.  Looking at the crosstabs for this poll, I find myself completely disbelieving what I see.  Consider: among conservatives, Obama receives 30%, while Clinton receives a measly 9%.  Does that make any sense to you?  It certainly doesn’t to me.  25% of Republicans prefer Obama, while only 11% prefer Clinton.  McCain poaches 22% of Democrats in either match-up.  I can understand why that many conservatives and Republicans might express a preference for “some other candidate” out of frustration, but how are this many people concluding that Obama is, in fact, better than McCain on those things where McCain angers them? 

The age factor appears to be working to Obama’s advantage in a big way with some of the youngest cohorts: the 30-39 year olds prefer him 63-34, while he narrowly wins among the 18-29 year olds, who are split more or less evenly three ways.  It’s encouraging to know that at least one of three people from my age group have some common sense.  McCain’s numbers among the different age groups eerily mirror Clinton’s exit poll data from Wisconsin tonight: he loses every group except 65+, and he loses them badly.  If this held up for the rest of the year Obama would win in a landslide, but I predict that this is not going to hold up.   

Both McCain and Clinton have impressively high unfav ratings at 53 and 59% respectively, while Obama has just 38% unfav.  Of the three, he is obviously the only one with net positive ratings.  This will change significantly over the next eight months.