USA/Gallup: McCain Up By 4, 10
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in 2008 Election, Barack, Biden, Democrats, Independents, McCain, Palin, Polls, Republicans
Among registered voters, the numbers look like this…
McCain – 50%
Obama – 46%
However, the bigger news is among the likely voters numbers…
McCain – 54%
Obama – 44%
And as many of know, likely voters are usually a better indicator of who will come out to the polls. That’s why Rasmussen’s daily numbers don’t swing as wildly as Gallup’s, but here we’re showing a more intense swing among likelys, which is bad news for Obama/Biden.
USA Today shares some numbers on voter enthusiasm…
Before the convention, Republicans by 47%-39% were less enthusiastic than usual about voting. Now, they are more enthusiastic by 60%-24%, a sweeping change that narrows a key Democratic advantage. Democrats report being more enthusiastic by 67%-19%.
The Palin effect? Perhaps…
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a national unknown before McCain chose her for the ticket 10 days ago, draws a strong reaction from voters on both sides. Now, 29% say she makes them more likely to vote for McCain, 21% less likely. Obama’s choice of Delaware Sen. Joe Biden as running mate made 14% more likely to vote for the Democrat, 7% less likely.
One last note, it appears as if fewer people were impressed by McCain’s acceptance speech than Obama’s…
Thursday received lower ratings than the one Obama gave a week earlier: 15% called McCain’s speech “excellent” compared with 35% for Obama.
The only bright spot here for the Obama camp? The poll was taken Friday through Sunday, and there are usually more problems with weekend polls than those taken during the week. Still, there’s momentum behind the McCain/Palin ticket and we won’t know until the end of this week if that’s short lived or sustaining.
More as it develops…
This entry was posted on Monday, September 8th, 2008 and is filed under 2008 Election, Barack, Biden, Democrats, Independents, McCain, Palin, 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.
September 8th, 2008 at 8:17 am
Didn’t Obama have a similar lead at this stage after the Democrat convention?
September 8th, 2008 at 8:23 am
McCain’s enjoying a bounce at the moment, however I wouldn’t worry too much about the Gallup USA today poll, it always seems to be an outlier, even the Gallup daily tracker and the Rasmuseen tracker don’t agree with it most of the time, still it will be interesting to see if this is a momentary thing or if it lasts more than a week
September 8th, 2008 at 8:23 am
[...] « USA/Gallup: McCain Up By 4, 10 [...]
September 8th, 2008 at 8:31 am
This is one election cycle that I don’t know if I’d trust the “likely voters” numbers to be as trustworthy this election cycle. The Obama ground game seems to be much more effective than previous attempts that tried to mobilize non-traditional voters. If in fact the youth vote, Hispanics and blacks do show up in significantly greater numbers than previously normal things could be thrown for a loop.
September 8th, 2008 at 8:55 am
Although Palin is a great counterpoint to McCain and time will tell if much more, it really seems the tepid Oboma campaign is the greatest contributor to the switch. It is his to lose, and he is losing it. The O campaign never developed any theme better than hatred of Bush, and O does not debate or interview well. His latest gaffe claiming” my muslim faith” and the need for the mainstream press to politely correct him so he could correct himself and the mainstream press’ claim it was out of context (not, as one can listen to the whole thing and appreciate even more the conspiracy of the press to keep putting lipstick on this pig) leaves a lot of people thinking maybe the O is an empty suit. How does it go, you can fool all the people some of the time….
September 8th, 2008 at 10:30 am
The likely voter models are an interesting wrinkle. Does anyone know whether these are constantly tweaked?
Presumably the people who showed up for this year’s primaries have given pollsters some idea of who is and is not a likely voter for 2008. If pollsters want to be accurate, it seems to me they ought to be trying to forecast who they think is actually going to show up in 2 months.
That makes the answer to the question above pretty relevant. Because how one views these results really must depend on the extent to which pollsters are currently accounting for higher registration and turnout numbers among democrats during this particular election cycle.
It’s not in pollsters’ interests to appear incompetent by reporting inaccurate numbers using a historical model, and then later telling folks that they were way off because they failed to account for who actually showed up. It’s a recipe for disater to constantly do it wrong and then later say say here’s why. What you want to do to keep customers coming back is get it right.
So my guess is that the current “likely voter” models really should already be incorporating what the numbers so far have suggested about who’s going to show up.
But on the other hand, the gap you’re highlighting here could be accounted for by a failure to update the likely voter model for current trends. Maybe that’s why they report both. Maybe they include an advisory about what they think the gap represents.
September 8th, 2008 at 10:40 am
Umm…
You know that whole “change” message? The one that Hillary eventually used and McCain has now claimed as his own? Do you remember who came up with that and ran on it from the very beginning?
September 8th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
You are right Justin, and that is pretty much were it has stopped.
True enough, but I believe that Obama stole it from the the Byrd’s 1965 albumn, “Turn, Turn, Turn,”. And in fact, the Byrd’s stole the “theme” from Pete Seger, who wrote the “theme” in the 1950’s, and who stole the “theme” from the Bible (Ecclesiastes 3, 1-8). It is important to note that the “theme” was handwritten and donated to New York University by the Communist Party USA in March 2007.
So there you have it. Obama not only stole his “theme”, but he is a communist to boot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn!_Turn!_Turn!_(to_Everything_There_Is_a_Season)