The latest NPR poll, conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner/Public Opinion Strategies, has a few interesting findings that deserve to be highlighted. First, the generic presidential ballot–Bush vs. our trusty unnamed Democrat–has changed dramatically since their poll in late May. At that point, Bush was leading by 15 points (50 percent to 35 percent); now he’s leading by just 3 points (44 percent to 41 percent).

That’s consistent with trend on most other public polls. But what’ s interesting here is that they broke down the late May and current poll samples by those in states Bush won by 5 percent or more, those in swing states and those in states Gore won by 5 percent and more. This exercise shows that all of the move toward the Democrats over this period has been in swing states (from +19 for Bush to dead-even) and in Gore states (from dead-even to +13 for the Democrats). The Bush states haven’t budged (+22 for Bush in May, +23 for Bush today).

One reason for the pro-Democratic shift over this time period is the rise in salience of the situation in Iraq. Just in the last couple of months, the number citing the situation in Iraq as one of the two top issues that will influence their presidential vote in ‘04 has doubled (from 14 percent to 28 percent). And those citing Iraq favor the Democrats in the generic presidential ballot by 29 points.

Those citing a number of other areas also favor the Democrats: education (by 25 points); affordable health care (by 21 points); the federal deficit (by 20 points); Social Security/Medicare (by 14 points); and the economy and jobs (by 12 points).

But it seems clear that the higher the voter salience of the Iraq situation, the better the Democrats are likely to do in November, 2004. Not exactly what Rove and co. had in mind (see DR’s post on “Plan A Falls Apart” for more discussion).