As we get further and further away from the Republican National Convention, it’s beginning to look like the post-convention bounce in favor of the McCain/Palin ticket is holding steady for the most part.
In the Rasmussen poll, the two tickets are tied:
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows the race for the White House is tied once again. John McCain and Barack Obama now each attract 46% of the vote. When “leaners” are included, it’s McCain 48% and Obama 48%.
One week ago today, Obama’s bounce peaked with the Democrat enjoying a six-percentage point advantage
Today’s result isn’t effectively different from yesterday’s, which showed McCain/Palin ahead by one point.
In the Gallup tracking poll, though, John McCain continues to hold a 5 point lead over his opponent:
PRINCETON, NJ — The latest Gallup Poll Daily tracking update finds John McCain maintaining his five-point lead versus Barack Obama among registered voters, 49% to 44%.
McCain led Obama by five percentage points in Monday’s report on the strength of a six-point increase in the percentage of voters choosing him on the presidential trial heat following the Republican National Convention. McCain’s 49% support in today’s three-day rolling average, based on Sept. 6-8 interviewing, is unchanged from Monday’s report and matches McCain’s high mark in Gallup tracking to date.
Gallup polling in recent days has been quite stable, showing McCain ahead of Obama by similar margins in each of the last four individual days of nightly tracking. McCain also had a 4-point lead over Obama among registered voters in the separate USA Today/Gallup Poll conducted this past weekend.
The GOP convention has clearly altered the structure of the race for now, which had shown Obama consistently ahead in the Gallup Poll Daily tracking updates for all but a few days from the time he clinched the nomination in early June until the end of last week.
More interestingly, Gallup shows McCain taking a huge lead over Obama among independent voters:
PRINCETON, NJ — John McCain’s 6 percentage-point bounce in voter support spanning the Republican National Convention is largely explained by political independents shifting to him in fairly big numbers, from 40% pre-convention to 52% post-convention in Gallup Poll Daily tracking.
By contrast, Democrats’ support for McCain rose 5 percentage points over the GOP convention period, from 9% to 14%, while Republicans’ already-high support stayed about the same.
The surge in political independents who favor McCain for president marks the first time since Gallup began tracking voters’ general-election preferences in March that a majority of independents have sided with either of the two major-party candidates. Prior to now, McCain had received no better than 48% of the independent vote and Obama no better than 46%, making the race for the political middle highly competitive.
If these trends continue, this race could turn out a lot differently than people have suspected.
October 9th, 2008 at 8:38 am
[...] Even with all those odds against him, though, McCain was holding his own throughout the summer. Before the conventions started, the race was essentially even. After the conventions, it was starting to look like McCain might actually be pulling ahead. [...]