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.
LOL. Priceless!
That’s because Juan Williams knows that Obama’s popularity and support are media-created illusion.
I think he will. For the first time it felt good to be a Repubican-McCain/Palin have finally begun to attack.
A 9.6% gap. That has to be too high.
I’m loving CBS
I’m loving Zogby
And look ... a pig just few by my window.
If loving them is wrong ... I don’t want to be right.
Then I heard her speak and knew that McCain had just made his very first presidential decision when he picked her and she ACCEPTED!
The party is once again energized and this will be a landslide victory for the good America.
Just like 1980, when Reagan won.
the best poll for McCain in the last week or so.
His lead among white voters is at 14, in my turnout model it makes Obama lead by about 5%.
The last NBC/WSJ poll was also ok-ish, with Obama leading by 6 with leaners. If McCain can stabilize his deficit at 6 by mid-October, there may be some chance for a final push.
Of course, if the market meltdown continues (S&P down 8% today before recovering to -4%), the slide in the polls will continue as well.
Does anyone here remember a presidential election where the polls a month before indicated a Republican win?
Way over-sampled independents and Dems. The poll questions and breakdown are here, in pdf:
http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/Oct08a-ALL.pdf
(That first number in each line is actual, the second is “weighted”)
Total Respondents 957
Registered Voters 875 821
Republicans – Reg. Voters 248 233
Democrats – Reg. Voters 320 311
Independents – Reg. Voters 307 277
Effective Likely Voters 616
What are those questions that are withheld (”q36-37 FOR FUTURE RELEASE,” “q38-53 RELEASED SEPARATELY,”) I wonder? Can those questions act as a “push poll”?
What this means is that if McCain sneaks out an EC win in November, the streets are gonna light up with how the election was “stolen.”
Good idea! I just called them--got through right away. When I said I had a question about their report regarding what the governor said that was racially tinged, she put me through to the national desk. The nice African-American lady who answered said, "I won't even attempt to answer that," and that I could leave a message if I wanted. I said, "no problem, I understand you're not the one who wrote it," but that I'd like to leave a message. I left a message telling them that their report was non-sensical and that their was no racial tinge to anything Palin said, and that I was disappointed in the AP.
Rasmussen is assuming that 6% more Democrats than Republicans will vote. This is simply unrealistic. Democrats haven’t had more than a 4 points advantage in any Presidential election since 1980 (and how well did THAT work out for Jimmy Carter....but I digress). The last time that the Dems had as much as a 4 point advantage was in 2000, when Gore nevertheless won the popular vote by less than 0.5%. In 2004, an essentially equal number of Democrats and Republicans voted. Two years ago, in a horrible election for the GOP, the Dem advantage was only 3 points.
Gallup is different. Unlike most other polls, it makes no attempt to weight its polls by party affiliation. Their numbers reflect nothing more than that more Demcorats than Republicans have been willing to talk to a Gallup pollster. This tells you more about voter enthusiasm for their candidate than the actual state of the race. If you don’t believe me, the same thing happened in reverse in Gallup polls during 2000, causing Gallup consistently to overstate Bush’s lead over Gore.
The way to read a Gallup poll is to read its weekly internals, which it usually publishes and updates on Tuesday or Wednesday. I personally pay the closest intention to this link (noting the changes in each category — including undecided voters — from week to week): http://www.gallup.com/poll/108049/Candidate-Support-Political-Party-Ideology.aspx
Hope this helps.
I went to the local Repub party office today and volunteered to call Independent registered women to get out the McCain/Palin vote.
The co-worker said no, the president controls everything having to do with anything involving money. My son asked him what about spending bills that the congress passes and sends to the president and the president vetoes them and the congress overrides the veto? The co-worker said that there was no such thing as overriding a veto. He plans to vote for Obama.
I know that democrats hope and pray for ignorance and stupidity to win elections and if the residents of the state of New York are any indication, this election will be a landslide for Barack Obama. I have never seen such willful blindness in my life.
This is what we're up against. A reality where people living in the Middle Ages had more knowledge and wisdom than 21st century Americans who vote for democrats.
Yeah, but I screwed up one of the numbers: the actual GOP share was 28.4, not 28.3. Sorry about that.
Your wish came true.
Now, will you please stop flogging that bogus Gallup “registered voters” poll EVERY MORNING?
It's the usual CBS oversampling of Democrats by nearly 10 points. There are already several posts on the actual breakdown, so here is a link to the actual CBS writeup:
http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/Oct08a-ALL.pdf
Streets will probably light up either way. If Nobama wins, it will be like winning the NFL/NBA championship and if he loses, well you fill in the ________(blank)
Yep, Dems are oversampled by at least 6.5 points but probably even higher than that.
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