Two polls show a stable Presidential race heading into the final two full days of campaigning with Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barak Obama holding a commanding lead over GOPer Sen. John McCain — and one poll shows Obama strongly-favored by early voters.
A new CBS News poll puts Obama 13 points among likely voters, 54 percent to 41 percent. And a new Washington Post-ABC News daily tracking poll gives Obama a 53 to 44 percent lead over McCain.
The details suggest that neither McCain’s energetic last minute-campaigning, his new lines of attack or several last-minute negative stories that likely-not-so-coincidentally appeared (Obama’s aunt is here illegally and a Republican sought help from an Oxford scholar to tie Obama’s autobiography to the traction-less Ayers issue..) have so far made any significant difference.
Here are some more details about these two polls:
CBS reports:
With just three days left until Election Day, a new CBS News poll finds that the Democratic presidential ticket of Barack Obama and Joe Biden leads its Republican counterpart by 13 points among likely voters, 54 percent to 41 percent. That margin reflects an increase of two points in the Obama-Biden ticket’s lead from a CBS News/New York Times poll released Thursday.
About one in five voters say they have already cast their vote, either in person or through the mail, and these early voters prefer the Democratic ticket by an even greater margin. Obama leads among early voters 57 percent to 38 percent, a nineteen point advantage.
The phenomenon of early voting is going to mean that political experts and the new and old media will have to readjust their assumptions about how campaigns work. It means the final week or week could actually be the week with LESS IMPACT than ever on voting shifts, since many voters cast ballots early and can’t respond to last minute strategies or charges — or may tune out.
The economy is by far the issue of top concern to voters, and they continue to view Obama more favorably on the issue than they do his Republican rival, John McCain. Fifty-one percent of registered voters say Obama would make the economy better, while just 29 percent say McCain would.
On the question of who will raise taxes, the candidates are roughly even: Forty-seven percent say Obama would raise their taxes and 48 percent say McCain would do so.
If this poll is correct, it suggests that McCain has been preaching to the choir on this — that his big push on the taxes issue has mostly convinced the base but not a sufficient number of other voters who aren’t part of the Republican party faithful.
This seen even more clearly in the WaPo/ABC News poll:
In a mere 56 hours, voters in Dixville Notch, NH will cast the first Election Day ballots of the 2008 contest, and in that time, John McCain will need to close a big gap among likely voters if he is to defeat Barack Obama.
In today’s Washington Post-ABC News daily tracking poll, Obama holds a 53 to 44 percent lead over McCain, unchanged from yesterday, and little in the survey suggests that trimming the margin would be an easy feat.
The poll finds that Obama is in better shape than Bush was in 2000 or 2004:
For the first time, the slice of likely voters who report they will “definitely” vote for Obama has (by just a hair) now reached 50 percent, a milestone which George W. Bush never reached in Post-ABC tracking polls in 2004 or 2000, and the number of movable voters – those who said they could change their minds or who remain undecided – has slimmed to 7 percent
And here’s the kicker for the McCain campaign:
McCain’s campaigning over the past week has not convinced more voters that Obama is a risky choice, nor has he gained ground as the candidate better able to handle taxes or the economy. (Obama holds a 13-point advantage on taxes, his largest of the campaign, and a 14-point lead on the economy.) For the second time in Post-ABC polling, Obama has crossed into majority support as the candidate better able to manage an unexpected crisis.
One plus for McCain: Strong enthusiasm among his supporters has moved up a bit to 41 percent, the highest level it’s been since the Republican convention, but still far behind the 68 percent of Obama supporters who are deeply enthused by his candidacy.
It’s hard to see how this could be significantly reversed in two days of campaigning — particularly since so many voters have already cast their votes.
SOME COMMENTS ON THESE POLLS:
Double digit leads three days before Election Day.
Either Obama and the Democrats are headed for a blowout of historic proportions, or everything we know about polling is wrong.
I go with the first option.
With the common estimate being that roughly one third of all ballots cast this year will be early votes, this means McCain would have to win the the remaining votes on Election Day by a margin of nearly ten points just to eke out a narrow win in the overall popular vote.
It’s possible for McCain to do this — and the internals show that the early voters are disproportionately self-identified Democrats — but it’s definitely a tough job.
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.