Posted on 10/06/2008 3:51:28 PM PDT by Chet 99
CBS Poll: Presidential Race Tightens
Democrat Barack Obama Retaining Small Lead Over McCain More Than Half Of Americans Polled Disapprove Of Bailout
NEW YORK (CBS) ― In a sign that the race for president has returned to about where it was before the first presidential debate, the Obama-Biden ticket leads the McCain-Palin ticket 47 percent to 43 percent among registered voters in a new CBS News poll.
The Obama-Biden ticket led by a wider margin, nine percentage points, in a CBS News poll released last Wednesday, before Joe Biden and Sarah Palin faced off in the vice presidential debate. Obama-Biden led by five percentage points on Sept. 25.
In the new poll, the Democratic ticket leads by 3 percentage points, 48 percent to 45 percent, among likely voters.
Barack Obama holds a 20 point lead in terms of enthusiasm. Fifty-eight percent of Obama voters say they are very enthusiastic about their candidate, while only 38 percent of John McCain voters say the same about the Arizona senator.
Roughly one in five registered voters have yet to commit to a candidate, though they may lean towards one or the other.
Interest in tomorrow's presidential debate is high. Roughly two in three registered voters say they are "very likely" to watch the debate, about the same percentage who said they were very likely to watch the first presidential debate and the vice presidential debate.
A CBS News poll conducted last week showed that more uncommitted voters thought Obama won the first debate, and nearly half of all voters expect he will win this debate too. Just one in four expect McCain to win.
The Vice Presidential Debate:
Both Biden and Palin appear to have benefited from their performance in the vice presidential debate. Both now have 40 percent approval ratings - an increase of six points for Biden and eight points for Palin from their pre-debate approval ratings.
Palin's unfavorable rating of 32 percent is significantly higher, however, than Biden's 19 percent unfavorable rating. And on the key questions of whether each candidate is ready to be vice president, or, if necessary, president, majorities see only Biden as passing the test.
Seventy-five percent of registered voters say Biden is prepared to be vice president, and 65 percent say he could be an effective president; just 42 percent say Palin is prepared to be vice president and only 37 percent say she could be an effective president. Even Republicans are more likely than not to concede Biden could be an effective president.
As uncommitted voters did in a CBS News/Knowledge Networks poll conducted immediately after the debate, registered voters who watched the debate give the "win" to Biden, 50 percent to 31 percent.
Both Biden and Palin improved their overall images somewhat in the debate, and both are seen by about six in ten voters as sharing their values. About one in three registered voters say the vice presidential candidates will have a lot of influence on their vote in November, the same percentage that said as much before the debate.
The Top Of The Ticket:
Obama continues to lead McCain when it comes to his overall favorable/unfavorable rating: The Democratic nominee has a favorable rating of 46 percent and an unfavorable rating of 34 percent. Registered voters are more closely split on McCain, who holds a favorable rating of 40 percent and an unfavorable rating of 38 percent.
Sixty-two percent of registered voters see both Obama and McCain as having the ability to be an effective president.
McCain has distanced himself somewhat from President George W. Bush, who currently has among the lowest approval ratings of any modern president. In this poll, 38 percent say that if elected president McCain would generally continue Mr. Bush's policies, down from 46 percent last month. This is the lowest percentage to link McCain to the president's policies since last April.
Obama has lost some ground when it comes to perceptions of how he would handle the economy, though he still leads McCain when it comes to the issue.
Twenty-four percent of registered voters are "very confident" that the Democratic nominee would make the right decisions on the economy, down five points from before the presidential debate. Forty-one percent are not confident, up from 34 percent.
Fifteen percent are "very confident" in McCain when it comes to the economy, meanwhile, and 44 percent are not confident.
The race continues to be close among independents. In this poll McCain has a small edge, 44 percent to 39 percent, among the group. At the end of last week it was Obama with a small lead. Independents have swung back and forth between the two candidates for the last few weeks.
Obama is leading among Democrats, liberals, moderates and voters who supported Hillary Clinton in the primaries. He has not improved his support among former Clinton voters in recent weeks, and presently has the support of roughly two in three.
McCain is leading among Republicans, Independents and conservatives. He is also leading among whites, including both white Catholics and white evangelicals, as well as whites making less than $50,000 a year who do not have a college degree.
The Bailout Plan, Congress And The President:
Last week Congress enacted a financial rescue plan on its second try - and while Americans are more negative than ever about the state of the economy, a majority (51 percent) disapprove of the bailout package. Just 31 percent say they approve.
Americans continue to think Wall Street is more likely to benefit from the government's economic bailout than the rest of the country. Sixty-percent say the plan will just benefit Wall Street, while 30 percent say it will help everyone.
A majority of Americans now disapprove of the government providing money to financial institutions. A week ago Americans were evenly split on the question; now just 36 percent approve while 52 percent disapprove.
And even though a majority remains much more accepting of the idea of helping homeowners, even that number is down from last week, with 54 percent now approving and 37 percent disapproving.
Few Americans approve of how either the president or Congress is handling the financial crisis. Both receive identical 21 percent approval ratings on the measure.
Fifty-five percent now say the economy is in very bad shape - the highest number ever recorded in a CBS News Poll. Only 11 percent think the condition of the economy is even somewhat good.
Moreover, Americans remain pessimistic about the economy's future: three in four think the economy is getting worse. Only 3 percent think the economy is getting better, while one in five thinks it is staying the same.
President Bush's overall job approval rating is 22 percent - the same as it was last week and the lowest of his presidency. Congress also receives dismal overall ratings from the public. Only 15 percent of Americans approve of the way Congress is handling its job, the same as last week. Seventy-two percent now disapprove of Congress' job, including a majority of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents.
This poll was conducted among a random sample of 957 adults nationwide, including 875 registered voters, interviewed by telephone October 3-5, 2008. Phone numbers were dialed from RDD samples of both standard land-lines and cell phones. The error due to sampling for results based on the entire sample and the sample of registered voters could be plus or minus three percentage points. The error for subgroups is higher.
Luntz is a PhD and knows his stuff. Fred Barnes is a cluless twit RINO who could not find his arse.
If Sarah can pull crowds 2 times larger then the terrorist loving “rock star” then Hussein Obama is in trouble.
If Sarah is pulling much bigger crowds then Obama it is more meaningful than any poll. This is why they feared her.
She brings positive enthusiasm. Positive wins big in elections. As Mike Reagan said - he saw some one come back like his father but she is a woman (I mangled the quote but you get the picture).
Sarah gets us excited and gives us REAL hope.
I called that number. A man answered the phone. I let him have it. That was the first time I ever did that. It felt good! I think I'm going to do it again.
The Obama inevitable winner, rock star, messiah, shining light hype seems to be RAPIDLY diminishing.
Obama is quicky being overshadowed by Sarah drawing TWICE as many people as Obama to rallies. The Dems are terrfied of her. We need to make sure that as many as possible get to those rallies.
Send Sarah and Todd to WS, MN, MI and Iowa. My guess is they will sweep the Northern Midwest at bag at least 2 of those states and maybe all of them.
If Sarah keep drawing larger crowds than Obama his star will dim rapidly.
Ignore the polls folks.
As far as bashing John McCain - I have major RINO issues with him. Obama is nothing compared to McCain. When I was a little boy, John McCain sat in a Hanoi prison for 5 or 6 years for fighting in a war JFK and LBJ started. McCain fought for my freedom whether the war was right or wrong. Our boys (and girls) were treated like garbage by Libs when they came home. McCain is not perfect but he deserves our respect and we should push him, fight with him if he is wrong but always respect him.
The only thing Obama has done is damaged my IRA with his criminal cronies at Fannie & Freddie which caused this financial implosion. It was not toatally Wall Street or even close - it was really Fannie & Freddie.
Fight, work, donate and volunteer for McCain-Palin 2008.
Bad guess but this place is filled with Chicken Littles so you fit right in. McCain is not down 6 or 7. The data showed 26% of Clinton voters going for McCain.
I agree the market needs to stabilize above 10,000. My guess is Soros and his shortie hedge fund pals will do their best to keep the conspiracy going.
The Rasmussen poll is based on voter turnout models. It really has less to do with party ID as much as what they project the turnout to be. Thus, since turnout for the Democrats (with Democrats and Democratic-leaning Independents) was about 7% higher than turnout for Republicans (plus Republican-leaning Independents) in 2006, this is pegged as a down year for Republicans with losses in the House and Senate projected by the GOP, the large voter registration advantage Democrats have this year in most contested states, the economic downturn, etc. it seems not like a big stretch to see the Democrats get 6% more to the polls.
We may surprise everybody in that regard and bring the voters out, but the ballot initiatives that often give it that extra kick are missing this year and McCain is not the most popular Republican one can think of. I hope they are proven wrong, but I don’t agree that the number they have come up with to project turnout is completely outlandish but in fact a bit below 2006’s turnout difference numbers.
Stop lookin at me swan!
“Incidentally, while retrieving this information, I noticed something else that was very interesting. In 2004, the Independents favored Kerry, but only by a single point: 49-48. In 2000, they favored Dubya 47-45. In the Gallup polling for Sept. 22-28, McCain led this group by nine points. With McCain doing better with Independents than Dubya did and holding his own GOP base, Obama is going to need ridiculously high turnout with his own base (signficantly better than Kerry, who is already the second highest vote-getter in Presidential election history) in order to win the election.”
You also seem to be forgetting that there are now more Democrats than Republicans out there. It is fact that unfortunately the Republican brand has taken a hit and party identification has gone down as a result. I pointed these links out to you earlier, but you may have missed them:
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/773/fewer-voters-identify-as-republicans
In 5,566 interviews with registered voters conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press during the first two months of 2008, 36% identify themselves as Democrats, and just 27% as Republicans.
The share of voters who call themselves Republicans has declined by six points since 2004, and represents, on an annualized basis, the lowest percentage of self-identified Republican voters in 16 years of polling by the Center.
The Democratic Party has also built a substantial edge among independent voters. Of the 37% who claim no party identification, 15% lean Democratic, 10% lean Republican, and 12% have no leaning either way.
As of September 26 the party ID breakdown has been polled as:
Here are the current party ID splits for the most recent polls that currently show an Obama lead. (The firms provide slightly different sets of numbers, for registered and likely voters, but the broad trend is clear.)
Gallup: 36 Dem-29 Rep, 34 Ind
CBS/NYT: 39 Dem-28 Rep for all respondents, 38-30 for registered voters
Diageo/Hotline: 41 Dem-36 Rep for registered voters
IPSOS: 48 Dem-36 Rep for all respondents, 47-40 for registered voters
Rasmussen’s 6% rate is seen by many on the left as too low, which is understandable, given the findings of Gallup, Ipsos, CBS. Who knows where the real number lies, and it really does depend on turnout, first and foremost. But the apparent claims that Obama has to hit a some sort of amazing royal flush to even come close to winning this election ignores many realities as we are finding them today, not the least the massive money advantage Obama has over McCain, which has been reflected in much higher TV ad exposure for Obama while McCain has been pretty much silenced.
We can still win this thing, but it will be very hard to do so, everything has to go just right at just the right time.
2004 is different from 2008. The GOP voter ID was even with the Rats’ voter ID. That is no longer the case. The economy was doing well. The war was not unpopular with a majority. Bush was not nearly as unpopular as he is today.
I think there are many valid reasons to assume that 2004 is not at all like 2008, but I hope that you are correct and I am wrong. I felt in 2006 that the poll projections must be wrong, and it ended up being even worse than most polls had predicted.
polls are scewed...but the good side is Obama gets comfortable thinking he will win and slacks up...WHAM..goodbye buzzhead.
When God performs a miracle, he doesn’t want man/woman to be able to take any of the credit...so watch out..MCCAIN-PALIN will win.
But it was an off-year election. 2008 is not.
The Dems tried to paint themselves as conservatives. That's out the window with Obama and Biden.
Palin was not involved then. She is now.
This year's turnout will not look like 2006, where turnout was about 37%. It will look much more like 2004 (64%). Count on it.
By the way, I don't know which election you were watching in 2004. But it didn't resemble the one I saw.
No, the Dem voting advantage was NOT 3% in 2006. Any way you slice it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_election,_2006
Seats won 233 202
Seat change +31 -30
Popular vote 42,082,311 35,674,808
Percentage 53.6% 46.4%
The seat vote for the House had the Democrats at 53.6% and the GOP at 46.4%, a difference of 7.2%.
The popular vote for the House had the Democrats at 52% to 44.1%, a 7.9% differential.
For the Senate things were worse:
Democratic: 31,397,838 Republican: 21,247,120 Libertarian: 612,732 Independent: 378,142 Green: 311,907 Independence: 231,899 Constitution: 26,934
Democrats 57.9%, Republicans 39.2%.
I really don’t know where some of you come up with the idea that the Democrats won by only 3%. It is simply not borne out by the facts. Is it because someone mentioned that in 2006 the Washington Post published a poll that showed party ID to be 47% to 44% in the Democrats favor?
Nnow, you have a point that turnout was about 37% while presidential elections have much larger turnout, but this year does not seem like a great year for Republicans, with even people like Rove allowing for the near-certainty that the GOP is going to lose another 4 to 6 Senate seats and another dozen or so House seats.
If the election will turn out to be an exciting one for the GOP, great. There is nothing pointing to that at this point, but if it does you will turn out to be prophetic. Right now it looks like a very dismal Nov. 4 from many perspectives, but if you are proven right it will mean a lot of people, including tons on the right and far right, will have egg on their faces. Should be interesting to see how it plays out.
This would mean that 65% of registered Republicans should have nothing to b*tch about if Obama wins.
Keep fighting the good fight sir.
The problem here is that in 2006, Independents leaned Democratic. When added to the 3% more Democrats who showed up at the polls, the end result was a disaster for the GOP.
But consider this. Independents also voted for President in the last two Presidential election. In 2000, they went for Bush 47-45. In 2004,they went for Kerry 49-48. In other words, the Independent vote was very close in both elections. This year, these voters are leaning to McCain. In the last week of Gallup poll data for this group (Sept. 22-28), Independents favored McCain by 9 points — a huge margin compared to 2000 and 2004. And this represents a net five point drop from the preceding week, when McCain lead these same voters by 14 points (this net 5% loss from McCain didn’t go to Obama, but to undecided — this is also very significant. We can expect these voters to return to McCain eventually. They are not Obamatons.).
And it is in this group where most of the undecided voters remain — according to Gallup, about 47% of them are still undecided, of which — again — Obama lost a net 2% and McCain lost a net 7% from the Sept. 15-21 polling period). By contrast, most of the partisan voters have already declared for one candidate or the other.
I agree that it isn’t totally nuts (as opposed to somewhat nuts) to assume that in 2008, Dems will have a six point turnout advantage over Republicans. But I’m just not buying it. I wouldn’t be willing to bet that Democrats will have any turnout advantage at all, much less a six point advantage. If they do, it will be less than the 3 points they had two years ago, and also without the big advantage they had with Independent voters.
Out of curiosity, where did you get the Gallup breakdown? I have been looking all over its website for that information. The only thing I found was a 10 point advantage for Dems over GOP in its tracking poll results for Sept. 20-22 (O47, M44 among registered voters as reported on Sept. 23).
I don’t put much stock in how respondents identify themselves as Democrats or Republicans to pollsters. As far back as I can remember, the adult poll has always been more Democratic than the registered voter poll, which in turn has been more Democratic than the likely voter poll. This is why I focus more on likely voter distribution by party as demonstrated by recent Presidential and mid-year elections. These polls ultimately come down to whether the polling samples are actually representative of likely voters, not just adults or registered voters (many of whom don’t even vote) who say that they prefer Democrats to Republicans.
One last thought. I haven’t forgotten Obama’s performance in the Democratic primaries, where both his hype and his poll numbers tended to exceed his actual performance on election day in key states such as Pennsylvania, Florida, and Ohio. This is the easily predictable result of a campaign that relies too heavily on raw emotion and first time voters, especially the yoots.
Thanks. I’m on it. :)
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