Diageo/Hotline now breaks out likely vs registered voters, Obama touches 50% among likelies for first time, also largest lead since inception of poll
Gallup adds a point for McCain, still a nine point advantage, only 6% undecided
GWU/Battleground takes weekends off. Happy caturday.
R2K remains flat at 12 (yawn)
Rasmussen opens back up to 52-45, debate offsets negative McCain campaign gains, Hagen opens up a couple points on Dole in NC Senate race
Reuters/CSPAN/Zogby closes up by four-tenths of a point (slow news day), coming out of undecideds, retains nine point lead among independents
Gallup Has Something interesting To Say; Film At Eleven
Gallup's poll has a couple interesting tidbits in an otherwise fairly quiet time for the trackers, as the last week of polling has really not moved the needle much--it looks like the Ayers etc advertising from McCain/Palin may have helped them out by a point or two, but the debate stopped that flow and indeed reversed it. Rather to my surprise, Gallup today says that among their survey respondents, 56% said Obama did better at the second debate, compared with only 23% for McCain. We saw something similar in the last debate, where the margin opened up significantly several days after the debate itself. Ronald Reagan saw something similar in his "there you go again" moment; once the meme sank in to the public consciousness, his performance in that particular debate was considered to be much stronger than it was just a day or two later. Information on Lincoln/Douglas was not immediately available at press time.
Gallup also has a poll on why McCain voters prefer McCain; the top two reasons now are not based on any particular issue, experience and a general agreement with his values or views; national security has dropped by nearly half compared with a similar poll a month earlier, at the same time as McCain slips back farther behind in the national polling--when security was considered a bigger issue, he was only behind by four points. Now with it a much smaller reason for voting for him, the lead is nine. For the Obama poll, the numbers are rock solid, though a few more opt for "want change/fresh approach" as the economic crisis deepens. This suggests to me that Obama's positions and character are actually fairly well understood by the public, so a negative advertising campaign telling people they don't really know what they feel pretty strongly they do may not be as effective as those responsible for it might have hoped.
Newsweek Poll Shows Obama Blowout, But Internals Show 78% Of Pollsters Use Recreational Drugs
A few new national polls in the last several days, all showing, as you'd expect, a varying degree of Obama leads. Fox, not including leaners, has Obama up 46-39, while Newsweek makes it 52-41 and SRBI 50-44. What's significant is that more polls all the time, when including leaners at least, are putting Obama at or over 50% and staying there. Newsweek points to what it calls "a historic boiling over of dissatisfaction with the status quo." Newsweek shows Obama actually taking a bigger lead among men (54-40) than women (50-41, about what we've seen with other polls for several weeks). Equally importantly, he leads McCain among voters 65 and older in this poll by a six point margin. Just when I was wondering if the internals here overly favored Obama, I'm thrown into an even more confused state by reading that in this poll, Independents are still favoring McCain by a two point margin, which actually is a better showing for the Republican than in their September poll. So I think the internals swing both ways--the Democrat over Republican edge is probably too high, at 39-27, but so are the McCain-leaning independents at 31%. Racially, I think they've got it wrong too, with 81% white and 17% non-white; that's not what this election is going to look like, unless they're calling everyone who isn't African-American "white." This poll also underweights younger voters dramatically, with only 12% in the 18-34 range--I believe that over 20% of voters in this election will be 18-29, and they support Obama by over a 60-40 majority. So the internals of this poll are, frankly, bizarre, and it should probably be ignored. But so we can finally put this idiocy to rest, because it never was a problem, isn't a problem, and never was going to be a problem, Hillary Clinton supporters back Obama by an 88-7 margin. OK? Read: http://www.newsweek.com/id/163339
Fox Asks Funny Questions, But Still Comes Up With Six Point Obama Lead
Fox shows very different trends, a 6 point lead, but 16 among women up from only 4 a month ago. Huh? Fox shows a two point Obama lead among independents, down from five two weeks ago. Obama/Biden has a clear advantage on all the issue-based questions, and their "gut-check" question, "If you had to make the toughest decision of your life, which candidate would you go to for advice?" shows a dead heat. Far more McCain supporters (28%) say their vote is a vote against Obama, compared with only 17% who say their Obama vote is a vote against McCain. I'll leave it up to you to figure out why. Interestingly, though, of the 40% of white voters who say race is a factor, they also claim to be split fairly evenly between the two candidates, suggesting that either a lot of whites are going to vote for Obama because he's black, there's a Bradley effect in play and they really won't, or this is just a messed up question. I go for the latter. The debates must be helping Obama among Fox survey respondents, because a month ago, this interesting but highly subjective question came out McCain 50, Obama 34, suggesting that the exposure has given Americans a lot of comfort with the very question John McCain is trying to ask and answer, "Who is Barack Obama?"
Party weigthing in this poll is probably more reasonable than Newsweek, 41 D, 34 R, 22 I. The seven point lead seems to be more in line with most surveys. However, only 11% of voters surveyed are black; while this would be in line with historic black voting patterns (12.8% of the population, underrepresented in voting), it's hard to believe that african-american voters will not turn out in larger numbers than usual on Nov 4. I do find many of these questions curiously worded, let us say, in a "just how scary a guy is the scary guy?" manner, like the Bill Ayers question with a suggestion Obama associated with a terrorist, not a guy who committed violent crimes nearly 40 years ago, while the one about McCain and the Keating Five goes out of its way to point out that McCain was cleared of all charges (but not that he was chided for poor judgment or that he took illegal contributions in the form of vacations). See for yourself if you care to: http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/101008_foxpoll.pdf
Declaration of Independents?
Anyone remember when Barack Obama was sweeping to massive victories in the primaries in states that allowed independent voters to vote in primaries? Just saying. Well, more than just saying--one thing the Clinton campaign failed to account for, among so many things they failed to account for, was the tremendous crossover appeal Obama enjoyed, and part of the wave that began and ended the race for the nomination on Super Tuesday was just that appeal to a broader base of voters than the Democratic hard-core. Even in the polls that weight the most heavily Democratic, it's not close to a majority--I don't know of one of these polls that has as much as 40% Democrats in it. It would appear to me that similarly to how Hillary Clinton was stunned to get whomped by independents, the McCain campaign is in a similar state, notwithstanding that the "maverick" brand has been consistently sullied by months of appeals to the far right and next to nothing that would make voters who fall somewhere in between Republican and Democrat but identify with neither comfortable. By the way, a maverick is by definition a loner, not a leader.
Troopergate Semi-Serious But Not Desperate
The Branchflower report found that Gov. Palin abused her power (by pressuring for the firing of a trooper) but not illegally (she can fire the Public Safety Commissioner whenever she wants). Also, and interestingly, that the state Attorney General's office failed to comply with the investigator's requests for information in the form of emails. For many, the bigger issue will be the consistent pattern of lies that led to this point; it certainly seems this is the problem the Alaska State Legislature has, that they've been played by a master. Ultimately I don't think the American people will care much about this, though the process, that she told a variety of conflicting stories about what happened and still hasn't really stopped changing her story, may be what people take away from this about her: that she was prepared to continue to lie until she found one that was acceptable or the clock ran down. The issue of stonewalling by the Attorney General's office may come back as well. If you have nothing better to do (but save a tree and read it online, willya?) http://download2.legis.state.ak.us/DOWNLOAD.pdf
Rats Deserting Sinking Ship--Or Is It The Ships That Are Deserting...?
We posted a note the other day on how the Minnesota Senate race between incumbent Republican Norm Coleman and challenger Al Franken had closed into a dead heat, with at least one major poll actually giving Franken a statistically significant lead (I'd still be inclined to call it an outlier). Yesterday, it was reported that Coleman had said "thanks but no thanks" to
His excuse for not appearing with McCain was perhaps the most telling thing of all, both in its lameness and how incredibly pointed it is in context: that he needed to the time to work on pulling his negative ads. Find the story here: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/10/10/as_mccain_goes_negative_a_gop.html#more
Palin Uses The Lines, But Obama Channels The Gipper
I've said, to overwhelmingly different responses, since the primary season that what Obama had tapped into so beautifully was the feeling of hope and positivity that Ronald Reagan was able to engender in the hearts of Americans. No matter if one believed in his ideas or not, just in terms of message it was crafted and expressed masterfully. While Sarah Palin has tried a typically McCain-esque scattershot approach to wearing the mantle, throwing out Reagan lines out of context and hoping it reminded people of The Great Communicator, Obama has tapped something deeper inside people who really want someone with a message they can admire. People like him; they may respect McCain, but amiability is not high on his list of qualities. We're finally beginning to see the press pick up on this, and it could be significant. F'rinstance, http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/10/10/the_new_old_gipper/
Sox take a squeaker at the Rays' house; Phils school the Dodgers. Cats and dogs living together. Stay tuned!
John
Herbert Hoover Quote of the Day is back and badder than ever!
Every expansion of government in business means that government in order to protect itself from the political consequences of its errors and wrongs is driven irresistibly without peace to greater and greater control of the nation's press and platform. Free speech does not live many hours after free industry and free commerce die. (Campaign speech, 1928)
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