Politics
Out of context: Reply #1188
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- hallelujah0
"Today's Daily Kos Research 2000 tracking poll has Obama up over McCain 51-42. All trackers are data from three days prior to posting, with R2K numbers from today (yesterday's numbers in parentheses) and the other trackers are from yesterday (previous day's data). LV=likely voter, RV=registered voter.
Today's trackers will have Sat and Sun post-debate data, but will not fully reflect post-debate sentiment until Tuesday. The trackers do, however, include McCain campaign suspension/resumption days.
Obama McCain MoE +/- RV/LV
Today
Research 2000: 51 (50) 42 (43) 3 LVYesterday
Rasmussen: 50 (50) 44 (44) 2 LV
Diageo/Hotline: 47 (48) 42 (43) 3.2 RV
Gallup: 50 (49) 42 (44) 2 RVTimes/Bloomberg 49 (48) 42 (43) 4 RV (previous data 1 week ago)
On successive days, Obama was up +7 Fri, +9 Sat and +11 Sun (MoE +/- 5.1 for individual days.) That +11 yesterday (single day polling) was Obama's strongest single day of polling, and is reflective of the debate Friday.
Other internals of note: Sarah Palin's fav/unfav are now – 9. 60+ voters are now only +5 McCain (down from +15 two weeks ago.) Obama now attracts more Dems (88) than McCain attracts Republicans (86), and Obama wins indies 49-41. McCain cannot win with those numbers.
Three of five polls have Obama up by 50% (or, if you prefer, Obama is in the 47-51% range and McCain can't break 45%.) The empirical suggestion is that McCain's "suspension" stunt failed to convince voters of its merits (click link for timeline).
Pundits give way too much credence to the idea that the aggressor in a debate wins. Partisans like aggression, but that is not what independent voters are looking for this year. They want Josiah Bartlett, not Col. Nathan Jessup. In addition to the "Obama won the insta-polls" idea (see Mark Blumenthal for Debate Reaction: What's a Win?), the LA Times/Bloomberg, Gallup and R2K improvements suggest Obama did himself some good; for those who need to see the numbers, they are there for Obama and not McCain.
LA Times/Bloomberg:
Obama was seen as more "presidential" by 46% of the debate watchers, compared with 33% for McCain.
The difference is even more pronounced among debate watchers who were not firmly committed to a candidate: 44% said they believed Obama looked more presidential, whereas 16% gave McCain the advantage.
The bottom line from Gallup:
But among the crucial group of independents who watched the debate -- those most likely to actually be swayed by what transpired, Obama won by 10 points, 43% to 33%."