LA Times/Bloomberg Poll: Obama Leads By 15
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in 2008 Election, Barack, Democrats, Independents, McCain, Polls, RepublicansObama - 48%
McCain - 33%
Undc’d - 12%
Barr or Nader - 7%
However, when 3rd party candidates are taken out, Obama leads by 12. Still, it’s an impressive margin and now we have another outlier to match Newsweek’s poll last week that showed a 15 point lead for Obama, 51% to 36%.
Why the big gap?
Once again, we see that voters are having a hard time getting excited about a McCain presidency…
McCain suffers from a pronounced “enthusiasm gap,” especially among the conservatives who usually give Republican candidates a reliable base of support. Among voters who describe themselves as conservative, only 58% say they will vote for McCain; 15% say they will vote for Obama, 14% say they will vote for someone else, and 13% say they are undecided.By contrast, 79% of voters who describe themselves as liberal say they plan to vote for Obama.
Even among voters who say they do plan to vote for McCain, more than half say they are “not enthusiastic” about their chosen candidate; only 45% say they are enthusiastic. By contrast, 81% of Obama voters say they are enthusiastic, and almost half call themselves “very enthusiastic,” a level of zeal that only 13% of McCain’s supporters display.
But what to do about this? It’s not like McCain can suddenly turn on the charm. He’s just not that type of politician.
Another key finding from this poll? The amount of Clinton supporters who defected to McCain is negligible…
But the great majority of Clinton voters have transferred their allegiance to Obama, the poll found. Only 11% of Clinton voters have defected to McCain.
If it really is only 11% nationally, then one could easily assume that this small segment of Clinton supporters probably never would have supported Obama in the first place.
The only silver lining for McCain in all of this is that this poll, like Newsweek’s shocker, was conducted over the course of a few days, and doesn’t have anywhere near the sample size that Rasmussen and Gallup’s daily polls have. And those indicators point to a much tighter race.
Interesting times ahead…
This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 24th, 2008 and is filed under 2008 Election, Barack, Democrats, Independents, McCain, Polls, Republicans. 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.
June 25th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
The problem with most polls and especially political polls is that poll takers are lazy. They don’t want a true representative sample so they sample in their own back yard. Most Americans don’t live in large metropolitan areas on either the east or west coasts. But that’s where the NY Times and LA Times and many other pollsters ask their questions.
The other problems is that many polls are actually designed to influence public opinion by the way the questions are asked and who is asked. But I believe most folks are much too intelligent to be swayed by mere poll numbers.
As a Social Scientist I would fire most poll takers because their research methods are worthless. They need to take a class in statistics or Social Science or proper research techniques before they take on the job of seeking public opinion. Maybe then they would get it right. But then somebody even dumber is paying for this data. And we all read it. In the end the only poll that really counts is on election day, remember to vote.