Obama v McCain Polling

[President Bartlet]

Obama now 14 points ahead according to CBS News/New York Times poll

The Obama-Biden ticket now leads the McCain-Palin ticket 53 percent to 39 percent among likely voters, a 14-point margin. One week ago, prior to the Town Hall debate that uncommitted voters saw as a win for Obama, that margin was just three points.

Among independents who are likely voters - a group that has swung back and forth between McCain and Obama over the course of the campaign - the Democratic ticket now leads by 18 points. McCain led among independents last week.

McCain's campaign strategy may be hurting hurt him: Twenty-one percent of voters say their opinion of the Republican has changed for the worse in the last few weeks. The top two reasons cited for the change of heart are McCain's attacks on Obama and his choice of Sarah Palin as running mate.

Obama is widely seen as running the more positive campaign: Sixty-one percent of those surveyed say McCain is spending more time attacking his opponent than explaining what he would do as president. Just 27 percent say the same of Obama.

McCain's favorable rating has fallen four points from last week, to 36 percent, and is now lower than his 41 percent unfavorable rating. Obama, by contrast, is now viewed favorably by half of registered voters and unfavorably by just 32 percent.

Obama holds a considerable edge over his rival on having the right "personality and temperament" to be president, with 69 percent saying Obama does and 53 percent saying McCain does. The Democratic nominee is also widely seen as more likely to make the right decision on the economy, far and away the top issue for voters, in a survey taken in the immediate aftermath of last week's historic Wall Street losses.

Opinions of the candidates could still change, and potential trouble spots remain for Obama, among them the fact that small percentages of voters cite Obama's past associations with Bill Ayers (9 percent) and Reverend Jeremiah Wright (11 percent) as issues that bother them.

But with more than four out of five of each candidate’s supporters now saying their minds are made up, the poll suggests that McCain faces serious challenges as he looks to close the gap on his Democratic rival in the final three weeks of the campaign.

Views Of The Candidates

Obama's lead over McCain when it comes to the economy has grown since last week, and a majority of registered voters now say they are not confident in McCain to make the right decisions on economic issues. Thirty-nine percent are not confident in Obama.

There is, however, an opening for the candidates in this area: Fewer than one quarter are presently very confident in either Obama or McCain to make the right decisions on the economic crisis.

On raising taxes - an area where a Republican nominee might be expected to have an edge - Obama also leads. Despite the McCain campaign's efforts to cast Obama as a tax-raiser, more registered voters say McCain is likely to raise their taxes (51 percent) than say Obama will raise their taxes (46 percent).

Voters are almost three times more likely to be very confident in Obama when it comes to health care (28 percent) than McCain (10 percent). A majority of voters, 54 percent, are not confident in McCain to handle health care, while 33 percent are not confident in Obama.

McCain continues to be hurt by his perceived ties to the unpopular Republican president, George W. Bush, whose approval rating is 24 percent. More than half of registered voters surveyed say they expect McCain to continue Mr. Bush's economic policies if he is elected.

[jfk2008]

Yesterday:

Average spread in favour of Obama in the national polls is now 7.92% compared to 4.5% at the end of September.

The average spread in favour of Obama in the most reliable national polls (those with a weighting of 1.0 or more) is 7%. That figure's been pretty consistent for the past 2 weeks.

Fox News is reporting that the US economy is in recession - more bad news for McCain.

It also has a story where Palin complains that Obama is running his campaign as if he's running against Bush:

She called it a strategy that's "wearing pretty thin."

Obviously she hasn't been reading the polls.

[jfk2008]

The latest Bloomberg/LA Times poll puts Obama at 50%, with McCain on 41%:

Obama Widens Lead as Americans See `Serious' Crisis (Update1)
By Kristin Jensen and Heidi Przybyla

Oct. 15 (Bloomberg) -- More than three-quarters of Americans say the U.S. faces a ``serious economic crisis,'' and most voters trust Barack Obama to fix it.

Obama leads Republican presidential nominee John McCain 50 percent to 41 percent among likely voters, a Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll shows. That's more than double Obama's advantage from a month ago. The Democrat's lead holds up when voters choose from a field that includes minor-party candidates and independent Ralph Nader.

With the economy dominant among voter concerns, 56 percent of respondents say they are confident Obama has a plan to deal with the financial crisis. By 50 percent to 41 percent, they don't have similar faith in McCain. Almost half of voters say Obama would do a better job handling the market meltdown and the economy in general.

The poll also shows that a majority of Americans want the government to take a more interventionist role in the economy:

Americans Embrace Big Government to Help Solve Market Crisis
By Edwin Chen and Matthew Benjamin

Oct. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Americans are looking to big government to dig the country out of the financial crisis, a Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll shows.

A plurality of voters support the $700 billion financial- market rescue bill President George W. Bush signed into law Oct. 4. That is a turnaround from a Bloomberg/Times poll in September, when a solid majority said it wasn't the government's responsibility to bail out private companies.

The poll conducted Oct. 10-13 also finds that Americans favor the federal government providing assistance to homeowners facing foreclosure, by a greater than 2-to-1 margin. And almost three-quarters say they believe insufficient government regulation contributed to the financial and housing crises, up sharply from September.

[myksav]

Quote:
Originally Posted by cyberianpan
palin hurt mccain badly in the cbs / nyt poll

her favourable plummeted post troopergate down from 40 to 32%

and 21% of respondents said their opinion of mccain had changed for the worst over the past 2 weeks with palin featuring big:

So palin now appears to be a drag on his campaign.

Cyp

gigo.

Haven't seen that one in a long while. Very applicable.

[cyberianpan]

The latest Bloomberg/LA Times poll puts Obama at 50%, with McCain on 41%:



The poll also shows that a majority of Americans want the government to take a more interventionist role in the economy:

The poll is very significant as it shows 8% undecided but intending to vote

Now ok that is down to way questions are phrased etc (so polls include "leaners" among candidate totals) ... but it still shows 8% to play for.

cYp

[myk]

Time/CNN Polls just published

Among likely voters:
[COLOR=#000080]COLORADO: [/COLOR]Obama 51, McCain 47
[COLOR=#008000]FLORIDA:[/COLOR] Obama 51, McCain 46
[COLOR=#ff0000]GEORGIA: [/COLOR]McCain 53, Obama 45
[COLOR=#ff6600]MISSOURI:[/COLOR] McCain 49, Obama 48
[COLOR=#800080]VIRGINIA: [/COLOR]Obama 53, McCain 43

Dates conducted: Oct. 11-14. Error margin: 3.5 points for all polls.

from
The Page - by Mark Halperin - TIME

If Obama is taking Florida and Virginia then McCain can have Colorado, Georgia and Missouri...

[jfk2008]

Time/CNN Polls just published

Among likely voters:
[COLOR=#000080]COLORADO: [/COLOR]Obama 51, McCain 47
[COLOR=#008000]FLORIDA:[/COLOR] Obama 51, McCain 46
[COLOR=#ff0000]GEORGIA: [/COLOR]McCain 53, Obama 45
[COLOR=#ff6600]MISSOURI:[/COLOR] McCain 49, Obama 48
[COLOR=#800080]VIRGINIA: [/COLOR]Obama 53, McCain 43

Dates conducted: Oct. 11-14. Error margin: 3.5 points for all polls.

from
The Page - by Mark Halperin - TIME

If Obama is taking Florida and Virginia then McCain can have Colorado, Georgia and Missouri...

If you read other polls you'll see that the only safe McCain state from that list is Georgia.

[hiding behind a poster]

Obama can kiss goodbye to Florida now:

FutureTaoiseach, your problem here is that you think every swing voter currently in the Obama column is desperately seeking a reason NOT to vote for him - so that as soon as some has-been like Jackson says something not entirely on message, a pile of states will suddenly turn red.

Needless to say, that's not the case.

[westair]

FutureTaoiseach, your problem here is that you think every swing voter currently in the Obama column is desperately seeking a reason NOT to vote for him - so that as soon as some has-been like Jackson says something not entirely on message, a pile of states will suddenly turn red.

Needless to say, that's not the case.

Yes, I agree and there is another factor at play here. Since the rabid shouting at McCain rallies about "getting" Obama in some way or another [including violence] many Jewish voters have been turned off McCain's mob. It is too close to the Jewish experience in Europe - when things went wrong "get the Jews" thinking. Jews in the US are deeply committed to social justice and this does not play with them at all.

[jfk2008]

FiveThirtyEight.com is reporting that Obama has taken a huge lead among early voters in five of the swing states:

Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Obama Dominating Among Early Voters in Five Swing States

Survey USA as a lot of good habits as a pollster, and one of them is breaking out the results of early and absentee voting in states where such things are allowed. So far, SurveyUSA has conducted polling in five states where some form of early voting was underway. In each one, Barack Obama is doing profoundly better among early voters than among the state's electorate as a whole:


State Date % Voted Early Early Voters Non-Early Likely Voters
================================================== ==
NM 10/13 10% Obama +23% Obama +6%
OH 10/13 12% Obama +18% Obama +4%
GA 10/12 18% Obama +6% McCain +11%
IA 10/9 14% Obama +34% Obama +10%
NC 10/6 5% Obama +34% McCain +5%


We should caveat that these are not hard-and-fast numbers. Estimates of early voting results are subject to the same statistical vagaries as any other sort of subgroup analysis, such as response bias and small sample sizes.

Nevertheless, Obama is leading by an average of 23 points among early voters in these five states, states which went to George W. Bush by an average of 6.5 points in 2004.

Is this a typical pattern for a Democrat? Actually, it's not. According to a study by Kate Kenski at the University of Arizona, early voters leaned Republican in both 2000 and 2004; with Bush earning 62.2 percent of their votes against Al Gore, and 60.4 percent against John Kerry. In the past, early voters have also tended to be older than the voting population as a whole and more male than the population as a whole, factors which would seem to cut against Obama or most other Democrats.

Now certainly, early voters tend to be your stauncher partisans rather than your uncommitted voters -- just 1-2 percent of early voters in 2000 and 2004 reported that they would have voted differently if they'd waited until election day. So it's unlikely that John McCain is actually losing all that many persuadable voters to the early voter tallies.

What these results would seem to suggest, however, is that there are fairly massive advantages for the Democrats in enthusiasm and/or turnout operations. They imply that Obama is quite likely to turn out his base in large numbers; the question is whether the Republicans will be able to do the same.

As the report says, the results should be viewed with caution but they seem to indicate the much greater enthusiasm Obama's supporters have for their candidate compared to McCain's supporters.