Posted on 10/22/2008 6:32:21 AM PDT by tatown
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Wednesday shows Barack Obama attracting 51% of the vote while John McCain earns 45%. Obama has now enjoyed a modest lead every day for nearly a month.
It is difficult to overstate the stability of this campaign ever since the events on Wall Street brought a new wave of economic anxiety to the fore. Just before Lehman Brothers collapsed and started the Wall Street debacle, McCain held a very slight lead in the polls. Immediately afterwards, the race became more of a referendum on the Bush Administration and Obama moved ahead. The stability of Obama’s advantage in recent weeks suggests that it will be difficult for McCain to change the dynamic before the results are finally set in stone.
For the past eleven days, Obama has been at the 50% or 51% level of support every day in the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll. During those same eleven days, McCain has been at 45% or 46% every day and the gap between the candidates has stayed between four and six percentage points.
If you go back a couple of weeks further, the results are pretty much the same. It’s now been 27 days since Obama’s support moved below 50% or above 52%. During that period, the number voting for McCain has stayed in the 44% to 46% range and the gap between the candidates has ranged from four to eight percentage points (see trends).
Rasmussen Markets data shows Obama with an 86.0 % chance of winning in November (see market expectations for key states).
Tracking Poll results are released every day at 9:30 a.m. Eastern and a FREE daily e-mail update is available.
Fifty-five percent (55%) of voters have a favorable opinion of Barack Obama while 54% say the same about John McCain. Those figures include 41% with a Very Favorable opinion of Obama and 26% who say the same about McCain (see trends).
Forty-seven percent (47%) of voters say the economy is the top issue of Election 2008 while 19% name national security. Eleven percent (11%) say fiscal issues such as taxes and spending are the highest priority while 10% look primarily to domestic issues such as Social Security and health care. Only 7% name cultural issues as most important.
Polling released yesterday for West Virginia and South Carolina show McCain leading in both. New state polling results were released earlier this week for Colorado, Florida, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia. See a video overview of the latest Fox News/Rasmussen Reports Battleground State polls.
Rasmussen Reports data indicates that Obama currently has the edge in every state won by John Kerry four years ago. However, of the states won by George Bush, McCain is trailing in four and five others are considered a toss-up. As a result, Electoral College projections now show Obama leading 260-163. When “leaners” are included, Obama leads 286-174. A total of 270 Electoral Votes are needed to win the White House.
Take a moment to predict how many Electoral College votes Obama will win this year.
Recent statewide Presidential polls have been released for Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin Demographic crosstabs for all state polling are available for Premium Members. Learn More.
Daily tracking results are collected via telephone surveys of 1,000 likely voters per night and reported on a three-day rolling average basis. The margin of sampling error—for the full sample of 3,000 Likely Voters--is +/- 2 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Results are also compiled on a full-week basis and crosstabs for the full-week results are available for Premium Members.
Like all polling firms, Rasmussen Reports weights its data to reflect the population at large (see methodology). Among other targets, Rasmussen Reports weights data by political party affiliation using a dynamic weighting process. During the final two months of Election 2008, party weighting targets are updated each Sunday (see additional information). For polling data released during the week of October 19-25, 2008, the partisan weighting targets used by Rasmussen Reports will be 39.7% Democratic, 33.0% Republican, and 27.3% unaffiliated.
A review of last week’s key polls is posted each Saturday morning. We also invite you to review other recent demographic highlights from the tracking polls, our Quick Campaign Overview and a 50-State Summary of the Presidential Race.
Sun and Mon were 50 to 46 days, so I have no idea how Rasmussen comes up with 51 to 45 today, based on last night’s 51 to 46 (or 50 to 45 before rounding).
Isn’t his ‘benefit of the doubt’ attitude towards Obama completely transparent? Jeeze, he’s already sampling +7 for Dems and now he has to round up to help Obama!
While I don’t complete buy into the conspiracy that all pollsters are ‘in the tank’ for Obama, it sure as hell appears that Rasmussen is.
Is it possible? Could McCain really be doing this poorly? If not, then has the liberal media learned how to prevent the American electorate from getting good polling data? If so, then what does that say about the country? Whether on the one hand the electorate really is in the tank for Obama, or on the other hand McCain is doing better than the publicized polling data lets on, either way, it seems like a poor state of affairs we have here.
I’ve never understood that either. Tracking pollsters tell you that each day they replace the oldest X interviews with the newest X interviews, but that’s not what I think they really do.
I’m not so sure, although I have less confidence in my uncertainty than a few months ago. :) When I see him on Fox News, he seems to think that of course Obama has it in the bag. The funny thing is that I used to remember him as a right-leaning Independent and when you go to his website you see lots of McCain-Palin ads.
Because Rass has already went on record (sort of) saying that Obama basically has this thing wrapped up. He’ll likely go out of his way to restrict any polling data that might show otherwise. It’s kind of like the old saying: “Don’t confuse me with the facts, my mind’s already made up”.
I do wonder why he keeps going on Fox News to tout his pro-Obama polling. Some might think that this creates a conflict of interest or otherwise interferes with his objectivity.
I have a darker theory: Rasmussen is in it primarily for the money and he knows that this year exuberant and inexperienced (with Rasmussen’s history) Obama voters are more likely to pay for his premium service than grumpy GOP voters. Yet another way in which this election so reminds me of 2000. :) Back then I was an exuberant and inexperiened (with Rasmussen) Bush voter who happily paid for and then drank his pro-Bush Kool-aid. I hope Rasmussem makes a friggin’ mint off these knuckleheads, although he might then need to go into the witness protection program beginning Nov. 5 or thereabouts.
I had never considered the $$ for Obamaturd supports theory. You very well could be right about it. If so, good for him. I hope he soaks them for everything they got....then at the last minute he jerks the rug right our from underneath them.
That's must plain mean. I fully approve. :)
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