New Polls, New Race, New Questions
“Given these attitudinal shifts, the question you want to ask is not why McCain has gained so much in the polls against his Democratic rival but why he has not gained even more. Indeed, it is entirely possible that his surge has only begun.”
Whether you are watching the polls, the television or the Internet, you know John McCain's presidential campaign is riding a grand wave generated by his choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate.
But where are we on the arc of the wave? Has it crested, or is it still building?
So dramatic has the reversal of momentum been since the first word of the Palin pick on Aug. 29 that it's hard to fix the full value of the turnaround.
This much is indisputable: McCain-Palin is a stronger ticket than any other McCain might have been contemplating. The governor of Alaska has touched the GOP passion nerve that McCain has long had trouble locating. Instead of telling pollsters they are less enthusiastic about voting than usual, Republicans are saying they are more so. That's good news not only for the presidential nominee but for all his party's candidates for elected office.
Just as important, and just as much by design, the Palin pick has inspired millions of independent women and not-so-political women to take a fresh look at McCain and his party. The powerful identification with President Bush and Vice President Cheney has been masked. Neither attended the convention, and great effort was expended on obscuring their existence.
Restored at last to the political persona that has worked best for him, John McCain is once again exuberantly claiming to be the candidate of change and reform.
Sharp turns in public perception have extended effects. The gusher of interest in Palin has refreshed interest in McCain. Polls show Americans suddenly open to McCain's ideas for the economy more than ever before, much as public approval for President Bush's ideas on education and economics shot up right after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Given these attitudinal shifts, the question you want to ask is not why McCain has gained so much in the polls against his Democratic rival but why he has not gained even more. Indeed, it is entirely possible that his surge has only begun.
But another look at the polls suggests an alternative scenario. Consider that with all the positive coverage of the Palin bounce, the last week has, so far, brought Obama down from a modest lead to a modest deficit. Some major polls still show the race a tie, others have Obama trailing — but within the margin of error.
The two pro-McCain polling results that have attracted the most attention both came from news organizations. The first was the Gallup Poll for USA Today published Sept. 8. It showed that, among those most likely to vote, McCain had leapt to 54 percent, pushing Obama down to 44 percent. That was the first double-digit lead the Republican had enjoyed over the Democrat in any poll since January.
At the same time, it was only 6 points greater than the McCain advantage among the likeliest voters that Gallup reported for the same newspaper in late July, a full month before either party's convention. At the time, this was the only survey anywhere showing McCain ahead. Others were favoring Obama by 5 points or more.
The same Gallup poll this month found that among registered voters, McCain's lead was just 4 points (a function of the "likely voter" screen and its greater reliance on older and nonminority voters). Gallup's separate tracking poll has also found the McCain lead in single digits this week.
The second eye-opening headline came from ABC News and The Washington Post, which said candidate preference among white women had shifted by 20 points. That meant that what had been an Obama edge of 10 percentage points within this demographic group had become a 10-point bulge for McCain. That made the Palin choice seem positively brilliant.
This 20-point swing means that one white woman in 10 has moved away from Obama and toward McCain, a less than seismic event, perhaps, but enough to move the needle significantly on this key gauge. The question now becomes: Will this trend hold or will some of these women drift back to Obama? If just 5 percent of the white women in the country did so, it would halve the post-Palin move to McCain within this demographic.
One body of evidence indicates that with all the histrionics of the two conventions and the supercharging Palin element, the relative strength of the two candidates has remained remarkably stable. Several national polls that showed a small bump for Obama after his convention now show that improvement eclipsed by the McCain-Palin convention.
The Rasmussen tracking poll, a new entry to the big leagues of national polling this year, still finds the race a dead heat. This is especially noteworthy because Rasmussen was showing the exact same results just before the Democratic convention began.
So is the boom for McCain-Palin still building, or has it reached its apogee?
Stay tuned. Because this campaign full of surprises and turning points probably has a few more in store.
7:25 AM ET | 09-10-2008 | permalink
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