Battleground States Buzz Countdown: Montana and New Hampshire
by Vera H-C ChanOct 29, 2008
- 11 Votes
With single digit days to go until the 2008 presidential election between John McCain (R) and Barack Obama (D), the battleground states will be seeing a flurry of last-minute skirmishes on their soil. Montana and New Hamshire, with 7 electoral votes between them, start off our Buzz Log daily countdown, in which we look at searches from people 17 and up.
• Electoral Votes: 3
• Troop Activity: Obama has been under fierce online scrutiny: His searches have risen 126% in the past 7 days, plus a separate 65% spike in lookups for "barack obama website." McCain queries have dropped nearly 90%. That puts Obama with 93% of all presidential candidate searches in Big Sky Country.
• Final Offensives: TV ads bought by the Republican National Committee begins airing Wednesday. The electorate is fired up, with absentee ballot submissions already surpassing the 2006 state record.
• Insider View: University of Montana journalism school students tracks the candidates and issues in a blog.
• Electoral Votes: 4
• Troop Activity: New Hampshirites refer to their candidates on a surname basis. To that end, "mccain" searches drop 15%, while "obama" queries stay steady and comprise 74% of candidate look-ups.
• Final Offensives: According to the Boston Globe, Hillary Clinton trailblazed on behalf of the Democratic ticket Tuesday, while former Massachusetts governor Jane Swift held a roundtable Wednesday. Both McCain and former president Bill Clinton plan a Sunday visit.
• Insider View: The New Hampshire Union Leader reports that the McCain bobblehead beat out the Obama dolls 1,000-968 at a hockey game. Fans claim some people jumped to the McCain line which was shorter, then stood in the Obama line—thereby demonstrating the swing vote in action.
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scenes from a New Hampshire battleground