While it is, of course, still early -- certainly too early to gauge the Lindsay Graham Meet The Press drama queen effect on the election -- it's good to see that the more state polls that are released, the more Barack Obama appears to be shoring up the Kerry coalition of states. The latest to fall into its natural state of blueness: Michigan.

Public Policy Polling (573 LVs, June 21-22, MOE +/- 41.%) has released the first poll out of Michigan since Al Gore endorsed Barack Obama there on June 16th and, despite the media's greatest hopes, it's looking as though the idea that McCain has a shot in hell at Michigan looks to be yet another of the great 2008 electoral myths in need of debunking.

John Kerry beat George Bush here in 2004 by 3%.

Some analysis from PPP's blog:

Barack Obama begins the general election in Michigan with a nine point lead. There are strong indications within the poll that party unity is close to full strength in the state. This is the first state where PPP has found Obama doing a better job of holding Democratic voters within the party (78-12) than McCain has of nailing down the Republican vote (74-19). Obama also has a 40-36 lead with independent voters, which Michigan has a lot of.

Obama's going to win any state where he's leading the white vote, and he has a 44-42 lead with it at this point. His 76-18 lead with black voters is likely to end up being larger on election day- pre-election polls frequently under estimate the percentage of the African American vote that Democratic candidates end up garnering.

Now, it should be noted that this poll, as of now, appears to be somewhat of an outlier, with the most recent poll taken June 9th showing Obama up just 3, so it will, as always, be interesting to see if other polls follow suit. One concern is that PPP's polling methodology may somehow favor Obama, as their recent state polls have shown Obama up by 11 in Ohio and up by 2 in Virginia. As PPP's own analysis admits:

"Every new poll PPP does in a swing state provides more evidence that talk of long term Democratic disunity because of the drawn out contest between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton was over blown."

But whereas the Ohio numbers were informed by extremely favorable (some would say unrealistic) party ID numbers, that doesn't appear to be the case in Michigan.

Democrat 38
Republican 31
Other 30