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Gallup Poll: McCain Three Points Ahead Of Obama With Convention Bounce

Posted by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief in Politics.
Sep 7th, 2008 | Comments

The 2008 Presidential race is now officially off to its two-ticket start — and it’s now officially potentially as close a race as 2000 and 2004 with the latest Gallup Daily tracking poll now putting Republican Presidential nominee Sen. John McCain three points ahead of Democratic Sen. Barack Obama:

The latest Gallup Poll Daily tracking update shows John McCain moving ahead of Barack Obama, 48% to 45%, when registered voters are asked for whom they would vote if the presidential election were held today.

These results are based on Sept. 4-6 interviewing, and include two full days of polling after the conclusion of the Republican National Convention last Thursday night. McCain has outpolled Obama on both Friday and Saturday, and is receiving a convention bounce just as Obama did last week.

And it’s a record number for McCain in this poll:

McCain’s 48% share of the vote ties for his largest since Gallup tracking began in early March. He registered the same level of support in early May. This is also McCain’s largest advantage over Obama since early May, when he led by as much as six percentage points. Obama has led McCain for most of the campaign, and for nearly all of the time since clinching the Democratic nomination in early June.

Meanwhile, Rasmussen has the race at a dead heat — with McCain now getting more support from Republicans than Obama is getting from Democrats:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday, September 7, shows the race for the White House is tied.

In the first national polling results based entirely on interviews conducted after Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech, Barack Obama gets 46% of the vote and so does John McCain. When “leaners” are included, it’s all even at 48%.

…McCain earns the vote from 89% of Republicans while Obama is supported by 81% of Democrats. McCain also manages to attract 15% of Democrats while Obama gets 9% of the Republican vote. Voters not affiliated with either major party remain fairly evenly divided between the two men.

Once again: it’s a sharply-divided nation with independent voters (and some displeased Democrats) who’ll be aggressively wooed by both campaigns.

See this earlier post on the changing campaign dynamics.

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elrod

Not all that surprising. Remember there's the fade of Obama's bounce and the rise of McCain's bounce. So the change seems quite rapid. But that's because the conventions are so close to one another.

We'll see where things are later this week when McCain's bounce fades.

kritt11

I never agreed with the pundits who thought the Dems had a lock on '08. Bush is extremely unpopular, but Americans vote on the cult of personality not the party's record in office.

Otherwise, Gore would have won in a landslide. He was a wooden policy wonk- Bush was affable and familiar. Unfortunately, Americans vote their comfort level and not the issues.

SteveK

It seems the option here is to either jump up / down / sideways at every bleep and burp OR you can look at ALL polling organizations side-by-side (either nationally or state-by-state).

I know which one causes the most handwringing but I also know which one gives a clearer picture...

Pollster,com - "The Polls: The 2008 Presidential Election" has good 'state-by-state' and national poll data comparing most all polling organizations. Mouse over states for basic info or click for graph comparing different polls.

superdestroyer

Obama is still going to win based on organization, funding, and having so many safe states. I also am beginning to suspect that telephone polls are becoming less reliable due to cell phones and the white who run them underestimating black turnout.

However, if SEnator Obama was really running a campaign of change instead of trying to appease every Democratic power block, he would be runnig away with the election and his policy positions would probably be less contradictory.

DLS

Obama remains in the lead, even discouting the liberal media's Obama campagning advantage.

I'm susprised about and ashamed of, though not surprised about, the failure of this site (which means, of those running it) to be more than superficial and introduce the subject of the federal takeover (seizure!) of Fannie and Freddy. Now, they always have been federal entitles but now they're fully federal (no public-private distinction). This is failure, moral hazard, and a threat of more disaster to come. This leftist site is obscessed currently with a succesful, decent, normal, anti-PC female VP (and being scummy about her choice as VP; shows how patriotic as well as decent you AREN'T) and obscessed with superficiality and ("exaggerated") triviality rather than look past your bent noses to the rest of what's currently happening.

(The bailout of these organizations is wrong. MORAL HAZARD. Yet it also ties up billions and billons that could be misused by Obama on social spending programs to buy the votes of those of those whose votes and souls are, and are cheaply, for sale. Ha, ha, ha.)

DLS

Those two organizations have always been, despite their nominal status, just like Amtrak -- at heart, government (public), not private, entities. Enjoy seeing more failures added to the record...

Ricorun

DLS, by any chance are you an alumnus of the Alan Ginsberg School of Sentence Destruction?

DLS

[yawn] Wait one, or better, two weeks.

Iowa Electronic Markets has been my favorite staple for tracking (with graphs). It can be assumed that it is tilted leftish by college students*, who are leftish due to their youth and naivete, but it's still one of the best sources, along with Pew (who is left-tilted -- only lefties would present four explanations for journalists changing their evaluation of the public's judgment in electing Clinton vs. electing Bush and put as the fourth explanation of the high rating after Clinton as elected and low when Bush was elected, that [liberal] journalists and editors resented the public's preference.)

Wait and see. Obama leads McCain. Will the blue and red "tracks" converge (or worse, for the children on this site, cross), or diverge?

http://iemweb.biz.uiowa.edu/graphs/graph_Pres08...

http://iemweb.biz.uiowa.edu/graphs/graph_Pres08...

Calm down, children. [sigh]

Ricorun

Calm down, children. [sigh]

So many sandcastles, so little time. [sigh]

Leonidas

Its going to be a very close race. National polls have little value, its the polls in the swing states that are the ones most worth watching.

elrod

For once, I agree with Leonidas.

DLS,
Yes, the Fannie-Freddie takeover is worthy of extensive commentary. I don't know that I could do it justice. And your interpretation of it re: money that could have been used to buy votes is silly. FNMA/FHMC date from the early 1970s, but they really have their origins in the 1934 Federal Housing Act. What FNMA/FHMC did was provide liquid to lenders by packing mortgage-backed securities and selling them; banks knew that Fannie/Freddie would buy their loans and they would have cash to keep lending.

The problem came with reckless lending practices that mixed up good with bad loans. As a result the MBSs were of dubious (or unknown) value.

This is, indeed, a very grave financial crisis. Bailing them out is akin to the FSLA bailout in the late 1980s. I wonder what the candidates have to say about it.

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