Presidential Diary: General election polls and South Carolina ads

• New Mexico leaning Democratic

SurveyUSA keeps on releasing a poll daily this week. And just as it showed yesterday that Iowa was ready to come back to the Democratic column, their new poll indicates that New Mexico might also be looking to switch back to blue:

• Breaking with what we are used to seeing, Clinton leads Giuliani more comfortably than Obama and Edwards do. She wins 51% to 43%.
• Against Thompson, she leads by 11 (53-42) and by 15 against Romney (54-39).
• Obama-Giuliani is the only contest in which the Democrat isn't victorious: There is a 46-46 tie.
• Obama beats Thompson by 11 though (52-41) and Romney by 19 (55-36).
• Edwards wins all three of his contests: He leads Giuliani by 4 (48-44), Thompson by 15 (52-37) and Romney by 20 (54-34)
  

This wave of SUSA polls confirms that the race is the Democrats' to lose, as they are in a great position in most of the states polled -- even in very red Alabama and Kentucky. The two main caveats, of course, are that Republicans are in a position to recover depending on which candidate they nominate; and that the SUSA poll from Ohio has been the one that looked the worst for Dems, and Ohio is still as important as it was in 2004...

• Romney inching up in national poll

Rasmussen polled national general election numbers matching Barack Obama to John McCain and Mitt Romney. Obama leads by 5 against McCain but only by 3 against Romney (46-43). This is quite remarkable given how far behind Romney has been in months. He trailed by 15-points in March and April, and trailed by single-digits for the first time in August, when he was 9 points behind Obama.

Months after starting his rise in Iowa and in New Hampshire, Romney is still struggling to make a splash in national numbers (either in the primary or the general election matchups), mostly because his name-ID remains so low. Is this a sign that the public is starting to pay more attention to the Romney campaign? And that it might be liking what it is saying? The SUSA poll out of Iowa indicated the same thing the other day, as Romney appeared even more competitive than his fellow Republicans in one of the state where voters know him best.

• Clinton's South Carolina ad
  

A few weeks after it started running the "Invisible" ad in the Iowa market, Clinton is now running a variation of that ad as her first radio ad in South Carolina, targeting the key constituency of black women. The ad mentions Hurricane Katrina and the "Corridor of Shame," a stretch of underfunded SC rural schools. You can listen to the ad here. Some excerpts:

If you are a child in a crumbling school along the Corridor of Shame, you ARE invisible to this president.. If you’re a mother without health care, a father without a job, a family that can’t get by on the minimum wage... you’re invisible as well... And if you’re stuck on a rooftop or stranded in the Superdome during a hurricane you’re invisible to this president even when you’re on CNN. Well, you are not invisible to me, and you should never be invisible to the president of the United States.

If Clinton manages to win the vote of African-American women, even by a small margin, she will likely get a win in South Carolina. Recent polls have shown her and Obama neck-and-neck in the black vote, with Clinton having enough of a lead in the white vote to lead in the overall numbers.

Obama has to move those numbers, and he is aware of this: He is also running ads targeting black audiences, and is planning a major grassroots efforts in the state aimed at introducing himself to state voters. His campaign is calling its latest plan "40 Days of Faith and Family." It will organize concerts and Bible study groups to boost his campaign's presence.