The post-convention bounce in John McCain’s favor that became apparent over the weekend is still there, and it’s looking like a game-changer.
First, the Rasmussen tracking poll now shows John McCain leading, albeit by a statistically insignificant margin:
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows John McCain with a statistically insignificant one-point lead over Barack Obama.
In the first national polling results based entirely on interviews conducted after the Republican National Convention, McCain attracts 47% of the vote while Obama earns 46%. When “leaners” are included, it’s McCain 48% and Obama 47%.
Last Tuesday, Obama’s bounce peaked with the Democrat enjoying a six-percentage point advantage. Before the two conventions were held, Obama had consistently held a one or two point lead over McCain for most of August
McCain leads by four points among men while Obama leads by three among women. On Tuesday, when Obama’s lead peaked, he had a fourteen point advantage among women.
The race, however, remains very, very fluid:
Forty-one percent (41%) of voters say that they are certain they will cast their ballot for McCain and will not change their mind before November. Thirty-eight percent (38%) say the same about Obama.
Which means that there is a sizeable cross-section of voters who could, and in some cases will, change their minds, perhaps more than once, before walking into the voting booth in November.
In the Gallup Daily Tracking Poll, the McCain/Palin ticket now has a five-point lead over Barack Obama and Joe Biden:
PRINCETON, NJ — John McCain leads Barack Obama, 49% to 44%, in the immediate aftermath of the Republican National Convention, according to the latest Gallup Poll Daily tracking results.
These results are based on Sept. 5-7 interviewing, and are the first in which all interviews were conducted following the completion of the GOP convention. Immediately prior to the convention’s Sept. 1 start, Aug. 29-31 interviewing showed McCain with 43% support among registered voters, compared with 49% today. Thus, Gallup credits McCain with a six-point convention bounce.
That is slightly better than Barack Obama’s four-point bounce from 45% in Aug. 22-24 polling before the Democratic National Convention started to 49% immediately after it concluded. Since 1964, the typical convention bounce has been five percentage points.
Gallup also includes this interesting chart showing how this year’s convention bounces compares to years past:
Not including this year, the average Democratic post-convention bounce was an up-tick of 6.8% in the polls, the average Republican bounce was 5.3%. So, Obama slightly underperformed in his post-convention bounce while McCain, so far, has slightly over-performed.
But, as Gallup notes, history isn’t really a good guide this year:
Since 1964, the first election year for which Gallup could reliably measure convention bounces, there have been only two examples in which one candidate consistently trailed until the time of his party’s convention, but took the lead after and never relinquished it. Those occurred in 1988 for the elder George Bush and 1992 for Bill Clinton.
But there are also examples where a consistently trailing candidate took the lead after his party’s convention, but later relinquished it — Jimmy Carter in 1980 and Al Gore in 2000.
Whether McCain will repeated `88 and `92 or `80 and `00 remains to be seen.
Joining Gallup and Rasmussen as of last week is the Hotline tracking poll which showed Obama/Biden up by six on Thursday, but now shows the race tied.
And, finally, a new CNN/Opinon Dynamics Poll shows the race tied:
WASHINGTON (CNN) — A new national poll taken entirely after the end of the Republican convention suggests the race for the White House between John McCain and Barack Obama is dead even.
McCain and Obama are tied at 48 percent each, according to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll out Monday afternoon.
Three percent of voters are undecided, according to the survey.
The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll questioned 1,022 registered voters by telephone. The survey, conducted Friday through Sunday, has a sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.
The poll is one of three new surveys taken mostly over the weekend.
The other two are a Gallup Tracking Poll and a Diageo/Hotline survey. When all three are averaged together for a new CNN poll of polls, the results have McCain up one point, 47 percent to 46 percent. That’s the first time in the CNN poll of polls that McCain has an advantage over Obama
The results are a little different, though, when the major third-party candidates are included in the survey:
McCain and Obama are the two major-party candidates, but the battle for the presidency also has some minor-party candidates, including independent Ralph Nader, Libertarian Party candidate Bob Barr and Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney.
When they are added to the equation, the race between McCain and Obama remains deadlocked, at 45 percent each, according to the new CNN poll, with Nader and Barr at three percent each and McKinney at one percent.
In a race that is as close as this one, the amount of support received by any one of these candidates could be enough to decide the next President of the United States.
September 8th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Oh look at that cute graph… they are spiraling together like two peas in a pod:)
The only reason they are dead-locked because an entire half of the nation is dumb.
September 8th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
John McCain is one of our nation’s heroes, he has sacrificed greatly and we are humbled by his courage. What I fear is that the traumas he experienced at the hands of his captors have left him with psychological scars that make him dangerously unqualified to be President. We are well aware of the massive psychological injury that severely incapacitates sufferers of post traumatic stress disorder. We are seeing more of it every day with the soldiers returning from Iraq. Post traumatic stress disorder is frequently undiagnosed and is precipitated with much less trauma of much shorter duration than that which we know McCain suffered.
His experiences have left him haunted by a war decades in our past and it’s effects are obvious in the fact that unimaginable atrocities, his captivity and suffering are always in the forefront of his mind, and we see him obsessively shift those experiences to the center of conversations about practically every topic that is approached with him. The awesome responsibilities of President would seem to be a dangerously heavy psychological load for a 72 year old man of John McCain‘s horrific past experience. None of this is John McCain’s fault, but the fault of his Viet Cong captors, who unfortunately and unavoidably have burdened him with a dangerously distorted and observably obsessed worldview that makes him sorely unfit for the presidency of the United States.
In regards to Sarah Palin, she is the new hero of the voters who put family values above all else, but is this warranted? Was it right for her to put her vast personal and political ambitions above the current hardships of her family? She is the mother of a special needs Downs Syndrome infant and an a pregnant and unwed teenage daughter, both of whom have been unfairly thrust in to the merciless spotlight of a presidential election. How can we view this as good parenting? Is exposing your vulnerable children to such scrutiny the sort of family values we embrace? When John McCain offered her the Vice Presidency on such short notice and with so little preparation, I cannot imagine that she did not respectfully decline under the circumstances, for the good of her family and the good of our nation. The response to this is to always ask if these questions would be asked of a male candidate, but the truth is we have not seen any candidate for President or Vice President in the recent history of our country with such a massive plate full of family issues as Sarah Palin, and I find her selfish willingness to subject them to such scrutiny in the service of her political ambitions to be most troubling.
September 8th, 2008 at 8:03 pm
Look, this bounce was inevitable for McCain. The intrinsic value of Obama was bound to show poorly against McCain. It has happened now and will not stop. Celebrity fizzles but character stays!
This was despite all the efforts by media outlets such as CNN and MSNBC that literally behaved like Obama paid surrogate channels this cycle. They destroyed the Hillary candidacy but people smelled a rat and now it is backfiring on them.
McCain will win this election comfortably with over 300 elecoral votes and over 50% of the popular vote.
For Obama his arrongance and his wife were his undoing I think.
September 9th, 2008 at 2:23 am
Once again … if you compare McCain/Palin’s track record with Obama/Biden’s, it’s no contest. McCain/Palin are a hundred times more qualified to lead this country. McCain/Palin show scores of actual achievements and solid service to America, while once again, Obama’s track record is one of excessive absences from his responsibilities, and all talk with no actual experience, or contributions to America.
Like Governor Palin has pointed out … Obama had the time to write two memoirs, but never wrote one piece of significant legislation … not even when he was in the state legislature. Regarding earmarks, and the economy … If Obama gets elected, his irresponsible and clueless ideas for shifting shifting America’s wealth would turn the U.S.A. into a third world country, with businesses laying off employees to keep their doors open. Obama’s ideas for national security would de-fang America and make us weak, putting us at the mercy of the world’s tyrants.