I know, I know, it's still too early to care, but let's keep an eye out for incipient trends, not the raw data. Stability seems to be the rule of the day, though any reaction to yesterday's curious comments from a couple highly placed McCain people (and not, to be sure, the candidate himself) regarding business acumen and Thomas Edison-like abilities would not yet be incorporated into the data. That being said, I think the last time anyone paid the slightest damn bit of attention to Carly Fiorina was when HPQ was my favorite short idea.
Today's data, with yesterday in parentheses:
Gallup Obama 47 McCain 45 (46-45)
Diageo/Hotline Obama 45 McCain 42 (46-42)
Rasmussen McCain 48 Obama 47 (48-47)
R2K Obama 48 McCain 44 (48-44)
McCain gained 3 points on "who handles the economy better" in Diageo/Hotline today, though still down 44-39--will be interesting to see how those numbers change over the next few days in light of both candidates' positioning vis-a-vis the continuing meltdown in the financial sector and the fact that with the AIG bailout, it's finally hit Main Street. Rasmussen also shows McCain ahead on the economy 47-45. I'm not quite sure how to interpret that at a time when the laws of the universe no longer apply in the economic arena and Rasmussen also reports that non-investors' confidence is actually climbing, implying that a substantial portion of the electorate isn't paying a lot of attention because it hasn't hurt their pocketbooks this week. They think.
Some bizarre socio-economic data from Rasmussen. McCain leads handily among Walmart shoppers, Obama even more handily among those who don't. (Disclaimer: I refuse to shop there, but that's because of Abu Ghraib-like conditions in their pet departments). That being said, Obama leads among voters with incomes lower than $40,000. This makes very little sense to me, as the two data points seem to be contradictory. Among white voters, he only leads among those making below $20,000 I would wonder if that last figure reflects a lot of young people not quite in the job market, as the lead is only four points. If it's much broader than that, and he's actually made a breakthrough among poor white people, his campaign has a lot to be optimistic about. That being said, it's too early and too small a sample to have genuine significance.
The AIG bailout is a little worrisome on several levels, but absolutely necessary, as all other options were exhausted first, including trying to get NY State to do it and cajoling, coercing, and downright begging a group of banks to toss the company $75 billion to tide them over til payday.
Stupid Future Ex-Surrogates Department
It's all McCain today, between the economic advisor giving him credit for inventing the (Canadian) Blackberry and the wife of Sir Evelyn de Rothschild calling Obama elitist. Oh yes, and so Carly Fiorina says neither John McCain nor Sarah Palin could run a large company. Then several hours later, with a gun to her head, she says Barack Obama couldn't either. Given her record of nearly scuttling one of the greatest business success stories in American history through her own appallingly poor strategic vision, one might well think few know more than she about being unable to run a large company (hey, whatever happened to Lucent? Oh yeah, it started to go south a few months after she left, didn't it...) . In March of this year, Warren Buffett, whose batting average is ohhh, just a shade higher, said of Obama and Hillary Clinton, "I'd put either of them in charge of a business." (CNBC, March 3).
OK, I'm going to follow my own advice and go get some sun now.
John
No one can rightly deny the fundamental correctness of our economic system. --- Herbert Hoover, 1928
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