Four Points

A week ago, John McCain had a two point lead over Team Obama in the Zogby poll. This week, the Republican ticket has moved into a 4 point lead.

The McCain/Palin ticket wins 49.7% support, compared to 45.9% backing for the Obama/Biden ticket, this latest online survey shows. Another 4.4% either favored someone else or were unsure.

More meaningful than the bottom line of the poll is what's inside it. The GOP convention was effective in boosting McCain's popularity and introducing Sarah Palin to the country.

McCain's favorability rating increased from 50% favorable last week to 57% favorable now, a significant jump that indicates the GOP convention was a success. Among independent voters, 61% now have a favorable impression of him, compared to just 49% who said the same a week ago.

We keep hearing how this election will be decided by independent voters - who now have an astounding 61% favorable impression of McCain compared to 47% for Barack.

Nearly half - 49% - said they had a favorable opinion of Barack Obama, while 50% they had a negative impression of him. Among independent voters, 47% gave him favorable marks, compared to 46% who said the same thing last week.

Voters are also feeling very good about Palin.

Among the vice presidential candidates, 54% said they now hold a favorable view of Palin, while 42% hold an unfavorable view. While 49% have a favorable opinion of Joe Biden, 47% hold an unfavorable view of him.

Just one week ago, 23% told Zogby that they did not know enough about Palin to make a judgment about whether they held a favorable or unfavorable view of her - but this most recent survey shows just 4% were unfamiliar with her - another indication that likely voters paid attention to the GOP convention this week, which won the highest television viewership numbers ever earned by an American political convention.

Barack's Shrinking Lead

The three day Gallup tracking poll has tightened up considerably since the start of the Republican convention, with Barack now showing just a 2 point lead over McCain - 47% to 45%.

Obama had led McCain by as much as eight percentage points in recent days, both during and immediately after the Democratic National Convention in Denver. Those results reflected a convention bounce for Obama of four percentage points in his support among registered voters (from 45% to 49%). It appears that McCain is now enjoying a rebound bounce coming out of the Republican National Convention in St. Paul that is nullifying some of Obama's gains.

Many of the people surveyed in this poll were interviewed before either Palin's or McCain's speeches.

The interviewing for today's report partially reflects public opinion following the highlights of the Republican National Convention on Wednesday and Thursday nights when McCain and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, made their acceptance speeches. This includes a strong night for McCain in Friday's interviewing, the first full night of interviewing following his acceptance speech.

Monday is the first day that the tracking polls will reflect entirely surveys taken after the conclusion of the GOP convention, so that's when we'll start to get a true sense of the McCain/Palin bounce.

The first Gallup Poll Daily tracking report based on interviewing conducted entirely after McCain's speech (from Friday through Sunday) will be published on Monday. The test for McCain will be whether he can do more than return the race to the absolute tie seen at the beginning of the convention period, and actually lead Obama by a significant margin for the first time since late April/early May.

Obama isn't taking the turn of events laying down - he's out fighting to defend himself as the agent of change.

“Don’t be fooled,” a particularly punchy Obama told a crowd this morning at a town hall meeting in Terre Haute, Ind. “These are the folks who have been in charge. John McCain’s party, with the help of John McCain, has been in charge.”

“Words mean something!” Obama said of Palin's reputation as an anti-earmark champion. “You can’t just make stuff up.”

As always, the McCain camp is ready with its own rebuttal.

“Barack Obama has requested the equivalent of $1 million in new pork-barrel spending for every working day he's been in the U.S. Senate, while John McCain has never once asked for an earmark, and Gov. Palin has vetoed hundreds of millions in government spending including killing the infamous 'Bridge to Nowhere',” Bounds wrote in an email response. “Just like so many other issues Barack Obama is all talk, has no record to back it up and isn't ready to make change."

Like Barack says - "you can't just make stuff up."

McCain Leads

Did Joe Biden's selection as Barack's running mate excite voters?

It's official: Barack Obama has received no bounce in voter support out of his selection of Sen. Joe Biden to be his vice presidential running mate.

While Rasmussen shows the race as a tie, today's Gallup Daily Tracking Poll has McCain jumping into a 2 point lead.

Gallup Poll Daily tracking from Aug. 23-25, the first three-day period falling entirely after Obama's Saturday morning vice presidential announcement, shows 46% of national registered voters backing John McCain and 44% supporting Obama, not appreciably different from the previous week's standing for both candidates.

This is not the direction that the numbers should be heading, but Barack mismanaged the Biden announcement by releasing it at 3am Saturday morning, the best place to bury a story. It should have come out days earlier.

This is the first time since Obama clinched the nomination in early June, though, that McCain has held any kind of advantage over Obama in Gallup Poll Daily tracking.

The Bump

Were all media attention not about to swing to Obama for the next week or so, some might be starting to ask - "where's McCain's lead?" After all, he's been kicking the crap out of Barack for almost a month, yet all he's been able to do is keep it about even. This surprises me - my gut says McCain must have developed an advantage.

Here's where the polls are today.
Gallup - Barack up 1%
Rasmussen - Barack up 1%

Gallup and Rasmussen are both tracking polls that are updated daily, so they're the best barometer of the feeling of voters. Rasmussen surveys likely voters, so their numbers tend to be more stable than Gallup's survey of registered voters.

An LA Times/Bloomberg poll of registered voters 8/15-18 shows a 2% lead for Barack, while a Reuters/Zogby poll of likely voters 8/14-16 gives McCain a 5% lead.

In a sharp turnaround, Republican John McCain has opened a 5-point lead on Democrat Barack Obama in the U.S. presidential race and is seen as a stronger manager of the economy, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released on Wednesday.

Were there no polls to guide us, I would have guessed that McCain is up 7 to 10 points right now. Is there a McCain effect - people reluctant to admit to pollsters that they are supporting the old white guy?

McCain leads Obama among likely U.S. voters by 46 percent to 41 percent, wiping out Obama's solid 7-point advantage in July and taking his first lead in the monthly Reuters/Zogby poll.

Perhaps Zobgy is using some technique that breaks through the ageism factor in a way that Gallup and Rasmussen haven't discovered, leaving their tallies tainted by age bigotry.

The reversal follows a month of attacks by McCain, who has questioned Obama's experience, criticized his opposition to most new offshore oil drilling and mocked his overseas trip.

The Zogby results are echoed, weekly, by the new Battleground Poll from George Washington University.

Despite a negative political environment for the Republicans, the presidential horserace is within the margin of error (+ 3.1%). With a tight turnout model, McCain currently tops Obama by 1 point (47%-46%).

The Battleground Poll indicates that Barack's key to winning is getting new voters into the polling booths on November 4 - a job that presumably gets harder as he abandons policies that made him look like a change candidate.

Democratic pollster Celinda Lake notes, "Voters are looking for change... This poll also modeled a traditional electorate. However, Obama has the ability to change the electorate. Simulating modest gains in youth turnout takes the ballot to a 2-point advantage for Obama. Changing the face of the electorate is Obama's ace in the hole."

Either way, we can expect an Obama bump as the spotlight swings to Barack for the VP announcement this week and the convention next week.

The (Zogby) poll was taken Thursday through Saturday as Obama wrapped up a weeklong vacation in Hawaii that ceded the political spotlight to McCain, who seized on Russia's invasion of Georgia to emphasize his foreign policy views.

The Numbers

The presidential race remains close, with Rasmussen showing McCain back in the lead by 1%.

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Saturday shows that the race for the White House is tied—Barack Obama and John McCain each attract 44% of the vote. When "leaners" are included, it’s McCain 47% and Obama 46%. With leaners, the candidates have been within one point of each other for nine straight days.

Rasmussen is the best poll - a daily tracking poll of 3000 likely voters. Gallup, which tracks registered voters without testing for their likelihood of their actual participation, shows Barack with a 5% lead.

Gas prices may be going down slightly at the pump, but there’s no doubt the energy issue is number one right now in the presidential campaign. John McCain’s proposal to lift the ban on offshore oil drilling is resonating with voters, forcing Barack Obama to back off his opposition to the idea.

McCain has a winner with drilling for oil. Voters want us finding new sources of fuel rather than cutting consumption.

A stunning 81% of Americans tell Rasmussen Reports that there is an urgent national need to find new sources of energy, and this need is more important that reducing current energy usage.

This is good news for McCain, who continues to hammer his Democratic opponent on the drilling issue, because by substantial margins voters believe the Republican’s top priority is finding new sources of energy while they think Obama is more focused on reducing the amount of energy we consume.

McCain's lead

Of the two polls that take a daily, constant look at the race for President, Rasmussen is, in my opinion, the gold standard. With a sample size of 3000, it shows a running tally of the last 3 days of surveys of likely voters. Today, for the first time since Barack secured the nomination on June 3, John McCain leads.

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows the race for the White House is tied with Barack Obama and John McCain each attracting 44% of the vote. However, when "leaners" are included, it’s McCain 47% and Obama 46%.

It's not a statistically significant lead, but it's a break-thru nonetheless, and one that continues a tightening trend that has been going on for some time.

This is the first time McCain has enjoyed even a statistically insignificant advantage of any sort since Obama clinched the Democratic nomination on June 3.

The other daily tracking poll, by Gallup, operates on the same premise as Rasmussen, but it tests registered voters, a less carefully filtered pool, for whether they are the voters likely to be taking part in the voting on November 4. In addition, it uses a smaller sample size. As a result, it's a bit more volatile. After having showed the race tied the last couple of days, it now shows Barack with a 3 point lead.

The three percentage point advantage for Obama matches the average since early June, when Obama clinched the number of delegates needed to head to the Democratic convention as the presumptive presidential nominee. Since then, Obama has never trailed McCain among registered voters, though McCain has tied Obama five times during this span, including Gallup Poll Daily tracking reports for last Friday and Saturday.

This is the second poll in a week that has put Barack in second place. A USA Today/Gallup poll that tested for registered voters and was released a week ago showed McCain with a four point lead.