Thursday polls: Are Democrats at risk in California?

Slow polling day today, as the bulk of the week's Pennsylvania polls were released earlier this week. That left the Thursday stage to Zogby, who released a poll from the Keystone state:

• Zogby shows a toss-up, with Clinton edging out Obama 45% to 44%. This makes Zogby only the second pollster with PPP to find this tight a race.
• In an interesting internal number, Obama is slightly ahead in union households. If he can hold on to that on April 22nd, it would be a great talking point for him to diffuse worries that he would be weak among blue collar voters.
  

We will naturally have to wait a few days for polls to start registering whatever impact yesterday's debate might have had on voters; in fact, Clinton's negative advertisement hitting Obama for his San Fransisco remarks only started airing at the beginning of this week, so the environment of the Pennsylvania campaign changed dramatically this week. That, too, can probably not yet be picked up by polls. It is of course unclear who all of this might help, but we will have to keep a close eye on poll trendlines in the next 5 days.

Meanwhile, two general election polls are of interest:

• In California, Rasmussen finds McCain competitive. He trails Obama 50% to 43% and Clinton 47% to 42%. Last month, McCain trailed Obama by 15% and Clinton by 7%.
• Obama at least benefits from a strong favorability rating (58%), whereas McCain at 48% and Clinton at 47% are weaker in this respect.

• In Colorado, a poll conducted by Republican polling firm TargetPoint Consulting shows McCain trouncing both Democrats, 51% to 39% against Obama and 52% to 40% against Clinton. I do not particularly trust this poll, and given its partisan nature take the results with caution (which also contained Senate numbers showing both candidates tied).

Colorado is an important state for Obama, one of the red states that is not traditionally at the forefront of Democratic preoccupations that the Illinois Senator thinks he can make competitive this year; the previous poll from the state (released by Rasmussen) shows him tied with McCain.

The worry for Democrats, of course, should come from California: They cannot afford to have this state even be competitive. Every day the Democratic nominee spends in California, every dollar that is spent on its expensive airwaves is that much less to go on the offensive in Ohio, Colorado and Virginia. A Democrat cannot enter the White House without California's 55 electoral votes, so McCain's staying in mid-single digits against both Democrats has to be a worrisome signs that the Arizona Senator has appeal on the coasts and appeal among Democratic-leaning independents who keep Democrats comfortably ahead in states like California.