Several polls within 24 hours paint a dramatic if contradictory portrait of the state of the race for the Presidency between the presumptive party nominees — indicating that the novelty has worn off for Democratic Senator Barack Obama who at worst is falling faster than the stock market (well, perhaps not THAT fast) and at best making lukewarm headway in increasing his support.
The polls underscore the danger of reporting one poll as Gospel, because as soon as one poll comes out, another emerges that contradicts the first one.
The disparities are stark. Newsweek’s new poll has Obama going from a 15 percent lead over McCain to just 3. CNN finds Obama ahead by eight. Gallup’s Daily tracking finds Obama has widened his lead slightly over McCain and is now ahead by six points.
And the latest Rasmussen report? It shows a dead heat: 43 percent for each candidate.
But the bottom line is this:
1. Obama is far from coming close to closing the deal. And that’s just among Democrats since some Clinton supporters and donors are balking and news stories suggest part of the reason is political payback.
2. McCain continues to stub his toe, even with his highly-touted staff shakeup, but due to Obama’s seeming deflation is still very much in the running. Lingering reservations about Obama — whose charisma in interviews and some appearances does not match his charisma in his major speeches — coupled with Obama’s subtle and not-so-subtle policy shifts as he moves to the center combined with the reservoir of goodwill McCain enjoys from independent voters to make McCain one of the strongest Republican choices to run against Obama.
If McCain’s campaign is stuck on stumble and Gramm-foot-in-mouth mode, Obama’s seems falling behind in bringing the Democratic party together and “taking off”.
These polls are contradictory but the cold, hard truth for Democrats is this:
Even the relatively good ones show their presumptive nominee is having trouble consolidating his party’s support and enlarging his national support.
This shouldn’t give solace to Clinton supporters, since their lack of support for Obama will most definitely mean Obama supporters will balk at supporting her if Obama loses and Clinton runs in 2012. Obama supporters feel as Clinton supporters do: that this is their historic moment. And if it’s scuttled due to Clinton supporters sitting on their hands due to hard feelings that stem from personal ire instead of substantive policy differences, you can bet your money in Vegas that another Clinton campaign will face payback due to perceived Clinton supporters’ 2008 payback.
Unless something changes, the Democrats seem to have a party rift that will either not heal or not heal completely, even with the future of the Supreme Court hanging in the balance. Could that change? Unleash Phil Gramm a bit more and perhaps it can..
The worst –almost shocking — news for Obama comes via a Newsweek poll, which shows a sharp drop in support:
A month after emerging victorious from the bruising Democratic nominating contest, some of Barack Obama’s glow may be fading. In the latest NEWSWEEK Poll, the Illinois senator leads Republican nominee John McCain by just 3 percentage points, 44 percent to 41 percent. The statistical dead heat is a marked change from last month’s NEWSWEEK Poll, where Obama led McCain by 15 points, 51 percent to 36 percent.
Obama’s rapid drop comes at a strategically challenging moment for the Democratic candidate. Having vanquished Hillary Clinton in early June, Obama quickly went about repositioning himself for a general-election audience–an unpleasant task for any nominee emerging from the pander-heavy primary contests and particularly for a candidate who’d slogged through a vigorous primary challenge in most every contest from January until June. Obama’s reversal on FISA legislation, his support of faith-based initiatives and his decision to opt out of the campaign public-financing system left him open to charges he was a flip-flopper. In the new poll, 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.
The worst news for Obama? He’s losing support among independents, who at this point consider McCain the real deal:
More seriously, some Obama supporters worry that the spectacle of their candidate eagerly embracing his old rival, Hillary Clinton, and traveling the country courting big donors at lavish fund-raisers, may have done lasting damage to his image as an arbiter of a new kind of politics. This is a major concern since Obama’s outsider credentials, have, in the past, played a large part in his appeal to moderate, swing voters. In the new poll, McCain leads Obama among independents 41 percent to 34 percent, with 25 percent favoring neither candidate. In June’s NEWSWEEK Poll, Obama bested McCain among independent voters, 48 percent to 36 percent.
Obama’s overall decline from the last NEWSWEEK Poll, published June 20, is hard to explain. Many critics questioned whether the Democrat’s advantage over McCain was actually as great as the poll suggested, even though a survey taken during a similar time frame by the Los Angeles Times and Bloomberg showed a similarly large margin. Princeton Survey Research Associates, which conducted the poll for NEWSWEEK, says some of the discrepancy between the two most recent polls may be explained by sampling error.
As the dog days of summer set in and Americans take a break from the daily political band-and-forth, a new CNN analysis of several recent national opinion surveys show Barack Obama with a sizeable lead over John McCain.
In the latest CNN Poll of polls, the Illinois senator holds an 8-point lead among registered voters nationwide, 49 percent to 41 percent, with 10 percent still undecided.
The 8-point spread is up 2 points from a CNN poll of polls released one week ago. It is double the margin it was one month ago, days after the prolonged Democratic race ended.
The latest Gallup Poll Daily tracking update finds Barack Obama leading John McCain by 48% to 42% when registered voters are asked who they would vote for if the presidential election were held today.
Obama has typically held a modest advantage over McCain since early June. The six percentage point lead in the latest results, based on July 8-10 polling, ranks among the presumptive Democratic nominee’s bigger leads, just one point shy of a high seven-point lead in June 7-9 polling.
In the last two weeks, Obama’s share of the vote has ranged between 46% and 48%, while McCain’s has ranged from 42% to 44%. So while preferences have not shifted dramatically, Obama enjoys a larger lead in the latest report because his support is now at the upper end of his recent range while McCain’s is at the lower end of his.
The close nature of this race is underscored by a Zogby poll….but that poll also shows Obama way ahead if electoral votes are counted on the firm’s polling results:
In key battleground states in the South and West, Democrat Sen. Barack Obama currently enjoys leads in Colorado and New Mexico, traditional Republican “red” states that are clearly in play this election season, the latest Zogby Interactive polling shows.
Meanwhile, Republican Sen. John McCain currently leads in Florida, while two other red states – North Carolina and Virginia – could go either way.
Libertarian candidate and former Republican Congressman Bob Barr is having a negative impact on McCain’s efforts, particularly in Missouri and Colorado.
These findings are some of the highlights of an extensive package of national online polls that included a total of 46,274 likely voters. Nationally, the poll found Obama leading McCain 44%-38%, with Barr at 6%. A Zogby calculation of the Electoral College count, based on this and other polling, Obama leads McCain, 273-158. A total of 11 states with 105 electoral votes are too close to call and remain undecided.
Meanwhile, the latest Rasmussen report shows a dead heat:
The race for the White House is tied. The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Saturday shows Barack Obama and John McCain each attract 43% of the vote. When “leaners” are included, Obama holds a statistically insignificant 47% to 46% advantage. Today is the first time that McCain’s support has moved above 45% since Obama clinched the nomination on June 3. It’s also the first time the candidates have been tied since Obama clinched the Democratic nomination…
For most of the past month-and-a-half, Obama has led McCain by approximately five percentage points. It remains to be seen whether this recent tightening of the race reflects real change or is merely statistical noise.
It’s also notable that one Rasmussen political barometer now seems to be dropping:
Rasmussen Markets shows there are no clear favorites for the Veepstakes in either political party. However, the markets currently give Obama a 69.5 % chance of winning the White House.
So in a nutshell:
–McCain is running a campaign that is now getting a thumbs down from even many Republicans in terms of staying on message, smoothness and nimbleness.
–The public has tasted Obama as the flavor of the month and now he’s no longer a novelty and his change message has been at least temporarily overshadowed by his shifts in positions and stances that have angered the progressive wing of the Democratic Party which has shown in the past that it would rather lose elections than vote for someone who is not pure enough.
–Obama’s policy shifts have not been indicative of a “teflon candidate” but have hurt him. His oversight in asking supporters to give money recently to help Clinton erase her debt followed by a quick mention won’t help him with Clinton supporters who increasingly seem willing to put personal ire over what they had previously insisted was a thirst to get a Democrat into power to set and change the national agenda. All the talk from Clinton supporters during the campaign about crucial it was to get a Democrat into the White House to halt the rightward shift of the Supreme Court was apparently just that.
The longstanding political question based on what is now a cliche has been:
If the Democrats due to national circumstances and bungling on the GOP’s part were virtually handed the White House on a silver platter, could they blow it?
The answer, increasingly, seems to be:
Yes.
Cartoon by Eric Allie, Cagle Cartoons
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.