McCain faces at least three major drags heading into this year's election: Iraq, the economy, and President Bush. Just how big of a handicap do each of these represent? We get some sense of an answer by digging through the latest Quinnipiac polls in the key states of Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Here are candidate preferences based on the issue of the economy and Iraq:

The Economy
Florida: Obama +19 (55-36)
Ohio: Obama +18 (55-37)
Pennsylvania: Obama +19 (56-37)

That's a fairly uniform (and serious) deficit facing McCain. These numbers are also consistent with the latest ABC News/WaPo survey released yesterday which showed voters "trusted" Obama more than McCain on the issue of the economy by a 16-point margin, 52 to 36.

The War in Iraq
Florida: Obama +29 (61-32)
Ohio: Obama +8 (48-40)
Pennsylvania: Obama +29 (59-30)

The Florida number is a bit surprising, given the Republican tilt of the state and the number of military families and veterans who live there. So too is the result in Ohio: if I recall correctly the state was particularly hard hit by Iraq war casualties which played some part (along with corruption and the economy) in the 2006 drubbing Buckeye voters put on the GOP. Quite frankly, I would have expected the Florida and Ohio numbers to be reversed.

Again, looking to the WaPo national survey as a reference point, we do not see the same sort of consistency on Iraq that was demonstrated on the economy. Voters in the WaPo survey were evenly split on who they trusted more to deal with Iraq, with McCain garnering 47% and Obama 46%.

President Bush
Florida: Bush job approval 27%
Ohio: Bush job approval 22%
Pennsylvania: Bush job approval 24%

It's not terribly surprising that Bush's job approval in these three states is below the national average of 29.8%. Surely McCain would like these numbers to be higher, but it's awfully hard to quantify how much Bush's low job approval is impacting McCain.

One interesting measure is how many Bush voters in 2004 are planning to vote for McCain, and how many plan to switch to Obama:

Bush ' 04 Voters
Florida: 80% voting McCain, 13% voting Obama
Ohio: 80% voting McCain, 13% voting Obama
Pennsylvania: 74% voting McCain, 19% voting Obama

Compare these numbers to how Kerry voters in 2004 plan to vote this year:

Kerry ' 04 Voters
Florida: 82% voting Obama, 9% voting McCain
Ohio: 78% voting Obama, 13% voting McCain
Pennsylvania: 83% voting Obama, 11% voting McCain

Overall, then, using this admittedly crude metric, we see McCain is losing a net of roughly 4% of Bush '04 voters to Obama in Florida, 0% in Ohio, and 8% in Pennsylvania.

Obviously, these numbers can't tell us how much of this migration is based on disappointment with President Bush in particular or a broader disappointment in/trending away from Republicans in general, but they are intriguing nonetheless and will take on more relevance as we get closer and closer to the election.