Tue Sep 09, 2008 at 01:35:07 PM EDT
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PublicMind of FDU has a new poll out today. It shows Barack Obama leading John McCain 47-41 with 11% unsure and 2% backing neither candidate. This represents a "tightening" of the race from their last poll in June when Obama led McCain 49-33. However, as I noted yesterday: As of August 13, McCain was trailing by ten points in New Jersey - and new voters are always under represented in polling. By way of comparison, Tom Kean, Jr was slightly ahead of Sen. Robert Menendez around this time in 2006. Forrester was down by only four points in 2005. And Forrester was actually four points ahead of Robert Torricelli in 2002.
If you want to read more about this, make the jump. |
| Thurman Hart :: Out of your PublicMind |
| It is interesting to see that Obama's support drifted downward from 46 to 42%. When you consider the margin of error is 3.5%, though, it isn't that dramatic of a shift. Even if you want to lay claim that this is the PUMA group dropping Obama for not coronating Hillary Clinton, it isn't very noteworthy.
It's even less noteworthy when you look down at question four. Of Democrats that voted for Hillary Clinton in the primary, only ten percent are supporting McCain now. That compares to seven percent who voted for someone else in the primary who now support McCain. Now, if the whole survey talked to 872 people, then the subset of Democrats interviewed has to be no more than about 450-500. The subset of those who voted for Hillary Clinton, if proportional, would be about 53% of Democrats, or somewhere around 230. I'm not going to calculate the margin of error for that subgroup, but it's pretty high. Which means that this is likely a high estimate of Democrats who voted for Clinton but don't support Obama.
If we look at the VP picks, it should come as no suprise that Republicans like the Republican pick and Democrats like the Democratic pick (though Republicans are more likely to say Joe Biden was a good pick than Democrats are to express support for Sarah Palin). What is surprising, if your analysis is limited to the number of breasts a candidate has, is that women really don't like Sarah Palin. Her favorable minus unfavorable is an anemic 4 (40-36). Among those who voted for Clinton, Palin's numbers are a net negative - only 21 support her versus 56 who don't, for a result of -35 points. So much for the PUMAs.
PublicMind also found a slight uptick in people who think the country is going the right direction - 19% - versus those who think it is going wrong - 72%. In June, those numbers were 15 and 74 respectively. Similarly, the percentage of people who think George W. Bush is doing a good job rose from 18% in June to 22% now. This may be due to the fact that people see things in Iraq as going better than they have in a very long time.
None of this is good news for Republicans. Major Tom Wilson and his echo-meisters can crow all they want, but when was the last time you believed a crow? |
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