Poll: McCain has comfortable lead in Arizona

Sen. John McCain holds a 12-point lead against Illinois Sen. Barack Obama among likely Arizona voters, according to a survey released Monday, undercutting speculation that McCain's home state could be a political battleground in the presidential election.

The survey of 1,000 voters was conducted by Public Policy Polling, a firm in Raleigh, N.C., that typically works for Democratic candidates. The company performed the Arizona survey on its own accord, rather than for a particular client, spokesman Tom Jensen said.

"We decided to poll Arizona because there had been a lot of noise in the last week that people thought it might be one of those toss-up sorts of states, so we wanted to see how much validity there was to that," he said.

They found little.

The survey shows that overall, McCain leads Obama 52 percent to 40 percent. Furthermore, the Republican senator draws support from a wide array of demographic groups, including segments that typically lean Democratic.

For example, among Hispanic voters, McCain trails Obama 48 percent to 40 percent, a difference of 8 percentage points. McCain typically trails Obama by 20 to 25 percentage points among Hispanic voters in other states.

The best indication that McCain has few worries in Arizona is that he's polling higher than 50 percent overall, Jensen said.

"Even if all the undecideds break for your opponent, you're obviously still in good shape," he said.

Unless something unexpected happens before November, Arizona will fall on McCain's side of the ledger, Jensen said.

The survey shows that McCain enjoys great support from the voters who know him best, said McCain campaign spokesman Jeff Sadosky.

"While we will never take any vote for granted, we are very confident in the level of support that we have in Arizona. He has overwhelmingly won re-election there time and again," Sadosky said.

In contrast, Arizona Democratic Party spokeswoman Emily DeRose said Arizona remains within reach for Obama.

"John McCain is not performing nearly as well as he should be in Arizona," she said. "Even if that kind of margin is accurate - and I don't know that it is - he should be performing much, much higher."

She noted that McCain leads by just 5 percentage points among Maricopa County voters, according to a poll released by the Phoenix polling firm Behavior Research Center on Friday. McCain is ahead 43 percent to 38 percent in the county that typically is a Republican stronghold, according to Behavior Research. He was ahead by 15 percentage points in the county in May.

The Obama campaign has kept a relatively low profile in Arizona since the Democratic presidential preference election in February, spending time and money elsewhere.

In comparison, McCain has made fairly frequent campaign appearances, often as he flies in and out of the state for weekend stays at his summer home in Cornville, near Sedona.

While Arizona looks like a long shot for Obama, other states such as Indiana, Virginia, Colorado, North Dakota and Montana are unusually competitive this year, said Dean Debnam, president of Public Policy Polling.

"There's no shortage of typically Republican states for Barack Obama to compete," he said.

The polling firm also found that McCain leads current Gov. Janet Napolitano in a hypothetical 2010 U.S. Senate race.

The question suggests a scenario in which McCain loses the presidential election and opts to run for re-election to the Senate, while Napolitano, a Democrat, leaves the governor's office because of term limits and challenges McCain for his Senate seat. McCain leads that race 50 percent to 43 percent.

The survey was conducted Wednesday and Thursday, and has a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points, according to the pollsters.