Posted on 09/09/2008 3:57:47 AM PDT by 11th_VA
PRINCETON, NJ -- John McCain's 6 percentage-point bounce in voter support spanning the Republican National Convention is largely explained by political independents shifting to him in fairly big numbers, from 40% pre-convention to 52% post-convention in Gallup Poll Daily tracking.
By contrast, Democrats' support for McCain rose 5 percentage points over the GOP convention period, from 9% to 14%, while Republicans' already-high support stayed about the same.
The surge in political independents who favor McCain for president marks the first time since Gallup began tracking voters' general-election preferences in March that a majority of independents have sided with either of the two major-party candidates. Prior to now, McCain had received no better than 48% of the independent vote and Obama no better than 46%, making the race for the political middle highly competitive.
(Excerpt) Read more at gallup.com ...
Give the wrinkly old white guy credit--his speech was a home run. An inside-the-park one perhaps--no fanfare, no praise. But it did the job.
If McCain’s surge is due to independents, then where is the accounting for the newly united and fired up republican base?
No surprise here... a lot of us stopped being Republicans when the Republicans stopped acting like Republicans.
This is why we are seeing the kamikaze attack by Obama now on McCain and Palin as mavericks and corruption fighters. They have seen these number too and know they have to change them in a hurry or this election is over.
(semiOT) Where did Freep go this morning? DDOS?
Last night at the county fair, we couldn’t get near the Republican booth, it was so crowded. There is a huge amount of interest in Sarah Palin. I work the fair booth every year and believe me, last night was very different than usual. The dem booth is across the hall and a little ways down so we were watching the interest there, too. Very little interest. They had huge posters and signs of the state candidates up and I looked to see if they had any Obama signs up. We are a town of about 40,000 residents. I wanted to see how Obama was going over with the folks. They had 2 or 3 little teeny Obama bumper stickers sort of hidden amongst the big posters of the state elections. It was plain they were trying to downplay Obama. He came in dead last in our primaries so I know they are very ashamed to have to try to promote him. LOL They wanted Hillary. I can’t wait for the media to start wailing that they should have picked Hillary.
I think McCain would have gotten the Indies, anyway. But I do believe Sarah brought in the base. The media doesn’t want to tell it but a lot of McCains surge is from Democrats flocking to our side. Most of the average democrats are not spittle spewing moonbats. They are everyday folks just like us. But Obama is too liberal. If their nominee had been Hillary she would have gotten those dem voters.
How come the polls are so close or tied when all these demographics are shifting to McCain bigtime??!!
I’ve been feeling really down ever since the Palin veep pick. McCain losing before the Palin pick was known didn’t effect me like it is now that she is on the ticket.
I don’t want to see her disappear if we lose in November =(
Surely, it does. With Palin basically captures the conservative base, McCain could afford to go to the middle. Having said that, it shows McCain's great strategy--including picking Palin.
What in the world are you talking about? Virtually every number out there right now favors McCain/Palin. Heck, I came on this thread fully anticipating having to rein in the “landslide!” hysteria, but I’m happily disappointed that’s not the case. However, I can’t even comprehend what you’re fretting about. You’re supposed to save that handwringing for two weeks from now, when the GOP bounce has faded.
They are not close! Last night on FoxNews Rasmussen was clearly ticked off about the polls. He is the only one who has them nearly tied. Gallup and Zogby have McCain a good ways ahead. Rasmussen is always for the dem. These pollsters ask questions that subtly lead the answers to the dems and they oversample dems and independents. If McCain is still taking the lead after that, I bet McCain/Palin are ahead even more than they are showing.
That's ridiculous.
The Rasmussen surveys are structured shifts in trends show up later as they are 90 day rolling averages of the data.
The polls above show that Democrats now support McCain by 14%. On Elections Day it will be 18%, may be even 20%.
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