Battleground snapshot: Obama winning by bigger margins than four years ago

Winning more than he was in 2008. I've made a couple of changes to our weekly battleground snapshot. First of all, New Mexico and Pennsylvania have been removed. They are no longer battlegrounds, so no need to pretend that they are. More interestingly, I've added a new column -- a comparison to the Real Clear Politics composite score from exactly four years ago ("O" is for Obama, "M" is for McCain). So today's numbers include a comparison from September 21, 2008. That way we can see how Pres. Barack Obama is running compared to his first bid. And the answer, for the most part, is "much better".

I decided to pull the two daily trackers from Rasmussen and Gallup to see how that changed the numbers. Well, it changed them a lot:

Obama 49.3
Romney 43.8

It's like the trackers are polling some entirely different race. But regardless, Obama is already running significantly ahead of 2008, when he had a 2.2-point national advantage over McCain.

Florida is an interesting case. Unlike the last several weeks, I'm no longer excluding the crap Baby Rasmussen pollsters that are swarming the state. Having artificially pessimistic numbers should cheer those who are paranoid of complacency. But if we take those fly-by-night Republican polling outfits, the Florida numbers are Obama 48.7, Romney 45.6 -- which would obviously be an improvement from last week.

But even the complete polling composite gives us fantastic news -- at a 1.3-point advantage, Obama is running over three points higher than in 2008.

And the numbers look similarly good, cycle-over-cycle, in Ohio and Virginia, Wisconsin and Michigan. As rough as North Carolina has looked for Obama this year, fact is he's over-performing his 2008 numbers at this point of the race by over six points. In fact, the only states in which Obama is currently under-performing are Colorado, Iowa, and New Hampshire. And he's still winning them.

And in case you're wondering, the movement in New Hampshire comes from a single Rasmussen poll in this surprisingly ignored state (for polling, that is), while in Colorado it came from a raft of polls showing a genuinely tight race. Meanwhile, in Ohio, Obama's margin would've inched up slightly had I taken out those crap GOP polling outfits.

Update: A week ago, Romney exceeded 46 percent five of these states, and hit 48 percent in just one. This week, he hits 46 percent in just three of them, and 48 percent in none. He is losing support.

He exceeds 46 percent in just five of these 12 states, and hits 48 percent in just one.