CBS Poll: Obama’s Race Speech Helping
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in 2008 Election, Barack, Polls, RaceAn earlier poll shows that the Wright controversy is seriously hurting Obama, but this new one from CBS shows that perhaps those who view his recent speech turn around their opinions.
Sixty-nine percent of voters who have heard or read about Obama’s speech say he did a good job addressing the issue of race relations, and 63 percent of voters following the events say they agree with Obama’s views on race relations. Seventy-one percent say he did a good job explaining his relationship with Wright. [...]Most voters following the events say they will make no difference in their vote. Seventy percent say the events will make no difference in their vote. Among those who said it would, 14 percent said it makes them more likely to vote for Obama while an equal number said it makes them less likely to support him.
Nearly a quarter of Democrats say the events have made them more likely to back Obama, while a similar number of Republicans say they are now less likely to do so. Three in four independents say the events make no difference, and the remainder are nearly evenly split between those more likely to support him and those less likely to do so.
So what does this mean? Basically, Obama may very well have stopped the bleeding, especially among independents, which will be key if he wants to shift the electoral map around in the Fall.
One bit of bad news…
When registered voters were asked if Obama would unite the country, however, 52 percent said yes – down from 67 percent last month.
One thing to keep in mind…that number is taken right after this incident so we could be looking at different numbers just a month from now. If he gets back on the road and gets back on message, that number could be back up near 70% by the time the Democratic convention rolls around.
This entry was posted on Friday, March 21st, 2008 and is filed under 2008 Election, Barack, Polls, Race. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
March 21st, 2008 at 11:31 pm
The only problem is not everyone has seen the speech, i’ve been going around telling people to watch the speech, and its true, those who see the speech agree with him and like what they hear, the only problem is most of the news sites are sticking to soundbites, like “typical white person”, instead of an honest discussion of the speech and his comments.
America is more ready for an honest adult conversation than many realize
March 22nd, 2008 at 12:37 am
It’ll go up. We Americans have the attention span of goldfish. How many even remember the “Xerox” nonsense?
March 22nd, 2008 at 5:42 am
What Xerox nonsense?
March 22nd, 2008 at 7:06 am
I question whether “those who see the speech agree with him and like what they hear” as a generality. My gut tells me this new CBS poll is close to believable, because his speech didn’t really change minds, just reinforced biases, but did succeed at damage control for supporters.
March 22nd, 2008 at 1:47 pm
I dunno Dick, the people I showed it to were not Obama supporters, heck one is a jewish guy who is supporting McCain and he thought the speech was great. I agree not everyone is going to be convince, but how many of those already disliked Obama and were not planning to vote for him anyways
March 26th, 2008 at 8:02 pm
[...] obvious caveat here is that it’s one poll. But when grouped with other polls, a trend emerges that suggests the Wright issue has been marginalized…at least for the [...]