Last month, when Newsweek’s national poll showed Obama leading by 15%, the press finally got their data point to talk about Obama’s post-nomination bounce. The Los Angeles Times survey released shortly after also found the Democrat with a double-digit lead, but most polls found a much tighter race. But there is a drawback for a candidate of a poll finding him with an uncommonly large lead: When the institute releases its next survey finding results that are more aligned with what you would expect, the storyline is one of a free fall, rather than one of relative stability.
This is exactly what happened when Newsweek released its latest poll yesterday: Obama leads 44% to 41% — a far cry from the 15% lead he enjoyed in June. “What a difference a few weeks can make,” sub-titles Newsweek, somewhat excessively.
The media has also found a narrative to explain the fall with. Newsweek’s second paragraph is devoted to Obama’s positioning game and concludes with: “53 percent of voters (and 50 percent of former Hillary Clinton supporters) believe that Obama has changed his position on key issues in order to gain political advantage.” But — and this is a big but — Newsweek does not seem to have asked the same question about McCain. A similar poll taken by CNN last week suggests that it could have found similar results: In CNN’s poll, 61% said McCain had changed his positions for political reasons and 59% said the same about Obama.
To be fair to Republican chances, however, there is no question that Obama’s camp ought to be less happy about its poll numbers than in June. The bounce it got out of the nomination was not as big as many had expected, and it only twice reached double-digits. The McCain campaign is on track to reaching its goal to arrive Labor Day without too big a deficit to overcome. The Rasmussen tracking poll, for instance, finds Obama’s lead to be down to 1% (and tied without leaners), the tightest the race has been since June 3rd.
To sum up, given the Democratic advantage in nearly all metrics this year, it is somewhat shocking to see Obama leading by such smaller margins in most national polls that are being released. However, the Democrat retains a clear advantage: the last national poll in which McCain led was taken in early May.
Meanwhile, two state polls were released yesterday and today:
- In Missouri, Research 2000 found Obama leading 48% to 43%.
- In Washington, Rasmussen showed Obama leading 48% to 39% (51% to 43% with leaners).
Both polls are positive for Obama. In Washington, the previous Rasmussen poll found him leading by 18%, so the trendlines are not very positive for him. But all polls taken in the state (and there are many) find him ahead by huge margins. Of all blue states that were somewhat tight in 2000 and 2004, Washington appears to have definitely exited the group of competitive states.
Missouri, meanwhile, is shaping up to be a key battleground. The last few polls from the state (Rasmussen, SUSA) found McCain gaining ground but still posting a narrow lead. While I moved the state to the lean McCain column in my previous ratings, I am taking note of the fact that Missouri might be one of the only states in which polls cannot agree on the favorite, with McCain and Obama leading in their share of Missouri surveys. The same is true about Florida, and it does say something about the state of the race that Obama looks so competitive in the two swing states that lean towards McCain the most.
I think the first newsweek poll was way to far in Obama’s favor, perhaps at the top end of the margin of error. Therefore I don’t think this second poll is that much of a drop. However, many other (but not all) polls have shown a small drop.
There could be several reasons for this. One blog said that it could have to do with all this campaigning he has done with Hillary. It could have caused swing voters (who never really liked her) to back away from him. Also I think it is reminding the overzealous clinton crowd (puma, just say no deal, etc.) that Hillary is not the nominee. This could explain Obama’s drop among women.
One other think to take into consideration is that John McCain is the best possible Republican to win this year; none of his primary opponents were nearly as well liked has him, and none of them had the ability to distance themselves from Bush the way he can.
One other thing (this worries me the most about Obama’s chances) is that Republicans are boldly trying to take two issues that should be killing them, Iraq and gas prices, and turning them into advantages. I don’t think any Democrats were expecting that.
I meant one other thing in the third paragraph
Polls contract and polls expand. This is a normal sine wave. Obama is still ahead and will stay ahead, in this anti-incumbent climate.
This also comes at the end of a period when Obama was on the receiving end of a lot of negative press: changes of position, wavering on Iraq withdrawal dates, etc. (What’s going on with the press is another story.) Trend-lines over a longer period of time are far more important than instant snap-shots.
Still, Obama has to do a far better job in delineating what he’s about as a potential POTUS. Some voters take comfort in slotting a candidate in a recognizable category. Obama’s pragmatist, post-modern approach doesn’t lend itself to that, and because it defies categorization, it makes those voters uneasy and reinforces the ‘flip-flop’ concerns.
You can knock me down with a feather, if all of Baracks’s woes are, and will always be, Hillary’s fault. If she campaigns with him she scares the independents. Really? If she does not campaign with him, then she is not a team player and will hurt his chances in November. Which brings me to this: Obama fanatics will never be satisfy and to a certain extent are quite naïve when it come to the expectations of a political campaign. See, a great deal of Obama sympathizers’ have bought into all this :movement” talk. The operating idea being that Barack was above politics as usual. Now they see that the whole movement thing is baloney. Boys and girls, Barack is not Gandhi, he is more like Nehru. Wikipedia please! A pol, and from Chicago to boot!! I have been telling all along, this is going to be a very close election. It will be decided on the poling booth, on election day, when folks come to the realization that they are pulling the level for the first African American national presidential candidate, and that that entails. Once I quoted the despicable little troll, Dick Morris. He said that this election was going to be difficult to handicap, because the party that cannot win, nominated their most electable candidate, and the party that cannot lose, nominated their most unelectable. 15% points. Uhmmm. And the ghost of Dukakis emerge again.
I don’t think Hillary is to blame for all of Obama’s problems, but I think she is a factor.
Her attacks set a precedent for Republican attacks.
I am not denying that Obama has serious electability issues. However, Hillary had many problems of her own. I remember Dick Morris saying in February that Democrats would be foolish to nominate her because she was the least electable.
Dick Morris hates the Clintons for firing him in 1996, but you have to admit that most Republican voters absolutly hate Hillary. The commentators spent all of 2007 attacking her because they thought she was inevitably the nominee.
The other thing to look at in this poll is the shift in Party ID. There are a lot fewer Democrats in this poll than in the previous version. While weighting polls by rolling party ID values over a longer period of time has problems of its own, it reduces some of the wild swings that come from not weighting.
There’s a lot of static with polls around July. I think that some polls before and after July 4th may give McCain and edge because of his service during Vietnam. I can’t remember, but I believe Kerry got a similar bounce in 2004 for the same reasons (strictly out of my memory).
Obama needs to keep the cash rolling in and remember “It’s the economy, stupid” reminder that Bill Clinton used in 1992.
I’m biased, but I believe Obama will win approximately 330 electoral votes in November. He’s young, intelligent, and has some cross-over appeal. McCain is in his 70’s, he comes off frazzled, he has a stigma of having a bad temper, his own party doesn’t like him, and he has similar positions with the Bush administration.
Polls in the summer do not mean tooo much excpet for looking into a very general mood. Obama’s advantage is very narrow, but is is an advantage because as Taniel pointed out, McCain hasn’t lead Obama since May. Yes the democrat was leading around this time in 2004, but that was when the enviroment was more evenly divided. Bush was starting to get alot of grief but he still had a lot of support. However the movment is clearly Republican and its more likely that the McCain’s standing in the polls is more of a ceiling than a floor for him. Pay attention to what happens after the conventions are over (September 5 to the november election) because that is when polls will start to matter much more.