September 7:
Talk about a bounce! Via USA Today, among likely voters, John McCain has a 10-point post-convention lead over Barack Obama, the only such lead since January.
Most important is the enthusiasm that Sarah Palin has generated on the ticket — quite a surge
On the question of Sarah Palin's favorability, here are the numbers by gender:September 20:
Women: Favorable 37%, Unfavorable 36% [+1]
Men: Favorable 48%, Unfavorable 27% [+21]
Among women, it's a wash. Among men, it's a blowout.
And on the question of whether the Palin choice makes voters more or less likely to vote for McCain, here's the gender split:
Women: More Likely 25%, Less Likely 28% (-3)
Men: More Likely 29%, Less Likely 21% (+8)
Now guess which group has changed its vote. In the August poll, women favored Obama 53%-38%; now they favor him ... 54%-38%. Almost identical numbers.
It's the men who've switched -- 48%-45% Obama in August, 53%-40% McCain now.
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin blew onto the national political scene like a surprise hit movie - with an exciting script, a new landscape, a fresh face - that suddenly everyone wanted to see and talk about.
...
But now that the Republican vice presidential candidate has been seen and heard by millions - and parodied on "Saturday Night Live" before millions more - a question has been raised about the "Palin Effect." While GOP loyalists apparently still love the movie, is it starting to wear thin on the rest of America, particularly the legions of middle-of-the-road voters?
"Is she a one-hit wonder? Unless she does something radically different from what she's currently doing, yes," Cal State Sacramento political communications Professor Barbara O'Connor said this week. She said that in the 23 days since Palin was named the GOP vice presidential choice, her script has been a limited and increasingly predictable one. "It's fine to say she needed some time to get her footing ... but we're well past that."
Public Policy Polling surveyed four states immediately after the Republican convention and then again three weeks later. In those states, Gov. Sarah Palin's favorability has dropped by a net average of 12 points, and Sen. Barack Obama's standing in the horse race has improved by an average of seven points.
...public assessments of Sarah Palin's readiness have plummeted, and she may now be a drag on the Republican ticket among key voter groups, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll
(Graph: Evan Robinson, Group News Blog, Data: Alaska Daily News, 2008.10.07)In recent Alaska polling, Sarah Palin's negatives have more than doubled since the end of August. Her positives have dropped more than 15 points. In Alaska.
Like Hubris said:
Why does it matter?
Because 47% of the electorate worry that John McCain would fail to complete even one term:
It's one of the largest age gaps between presidential candidates in American history.
Republican Sen. John McCain is 72, a skin cancer survivor, and would be the oldest man sworn in for a first term as president. His opponent, Democratic Sen. Barack Obama, is 47 and the fourth-youngest major party nominee.
A new CNN/Opinion Research Corp. Poll finds that may be a political liability for McCain. Nearly half of the Americans surveyed, 47 percent, are concerned that McCain would not finish a four-year term as president in good health.
Put Palin's plunging polled positive prospects (I hate it when I get stuck on 'P') alongside the electorate's concern's about McCain's health and welfare, and you have a lot of people worried about Palin landing in the Oval Office. Selecting Palin as the VP may prove to have been the death-knell for McCain's candidacy:
THOUGHTS ON SARAH PALIN'S RNC SPEECH - In a word, nauseating. Gov. Sarah Palin, who we are being led to believe is a 'conservative's conservative,' had the opportunity to outline her policies in a clear and coherent fashion. She had the opportunity to share her vision of America, and how starkly it contrasts to the socialist vision of Barack Obama. Instead, we got sarcasm, whining, and just plain old nastiness. The partisan hacks in attendance ate it up with a spoon, of course; but I can't help but feel that 75% of America was watching and thinking 'this is Dick Cheney in a skirt,' only nowhere near as shrewd. We got the tired neo-con lines about terrorism, Islam, protecting poor little ole' Israel, so on and so forth. Absent a 9-11 type disaster sometime in the next 63 days (always a possibility, I suppose), that is not going to sell in the year 2008. Not a chance, as most Americans have woken up to the GOP fear mongering, which is why Obama's pie-in-the-sky rhetoric of 'change' and 'hope' is working as well as it is with the still-quite-ignorant masses.
I don't think I need add anything more.
|