Why is this presidential race tied? Gallup finds Obama leading by two points -- a statistical dead heat. I'm serious.
Obama has run a smooth campaign so far, while McCain has been all over the map. Obama's supporters adore him; McCain's backers don't have much enthusiasm for their guy. The economy is in serious trouble, gas prices are through the roof, and nearly 80 percent of Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. The president who leads McCain's party is less popular than Richard Nixon was when he resigned. Since 2006, the Republicans at the national level have been hemorrhaging.
And yet: the race is essentially tied. How come?
My guess: the independents are very wary of Obama. They may not like McCain, but they know what they're getting with him. With Obama -- not so much. This is why McCain's line of attack right now, exploiting suspicion that Obama's overhyped, would be so potentially effective, if the ads were better done. And it may do the trick anyway for McCain. I think Obama's going to be far more fleet-footed than McCain in the debates, so if you're McCain, you want to exploit those doubts. If you want to win.
Add to Del.icio.us
Add to Technorati
Add to Digg
Add to Newsvine
Add to Facebook
Add to StumbleUpon
Subscribe
Short answer:
1) We currently have a race where the two candidates are generally acceptable to most members of their respective parties; hence, the race is close. In the 1988 race, Bush (41) beat Dukakis in the general by a bit less than 8 percentage points in the popular vote, and that was considered a very solid victory.
2) When you take a poll, you report a result based on adjustments to the data. For instance, if you poll 100 people on their presidential vote and get 55 Democrats and 45 Republicans, but you think the split is really 50-50, you do some arithmetic to make it as if you had called 50 of each and report that result. There is nothing corrupt or otherwise intrinsically bad about doing this but it is more of an art than a science. Right now, Obama has a lot of young people saying they'll come out to vote for him, and pollsters substantially discount those numbers. They may well be right to do so. Only time will tell.
Obama has not done sufficiently well at appealing to older white voters and Catholics. Despite the "National Review" crowd disliking McCain, for everyone else he is somewhat better. He is more liked among Independents and moderate Republicans than Romney ever was or probable ever will be. McCain's religion is also less controversial than Huckabee or Romney. (McCain's some kind of vague Baptist who was a vague Episcopalian. He was never a minister or a member of a religion new enough to be founded in the US.) In fact McCain's religion is less controversial than Obama's I suppose.
From what I can tell, exempting Dole, when a candidates is over 63- years-old they usually win unless they're facing someone even older. Youth is good for media excitement, positive and negative, more than it is for polls.
Obama needs to remind independent voters why Bush has ruined this country and that John McCain is exactly the same.
Because Obama has been out of the country for almost two weeks. McCain slipped big on his foreign tour, too.
Because of persistent "rumors" (aka lies) spread by conservatives and GOPers that Obama is a Muslim, that he is not "patriotic" enough", because of 6 wasted weeks that concentrated on the utterings of his pastor (and I'd bet that not a single person here could name McCain's pastor without googling it), because of innuendoes about the alleged secret sex life of a potential runnig mate of Obama's while simultaneously ignoring the actual sordid sex life of the Republican candidate (and subsequently shutting down discusion threads that point this out), because of an ungodly emphasis on religion in politics in America (and it better be the right religion too), etc.
Thanks for asking.
Post a Comment
By submitting these comments, I agree to the beliefnet.com terms of service, rules of conduct and privacy policy (the "agreements"). I understand and agree that any content I post is licensed to beliefnet.com and may be used by beliefnet.com in accordance with the agreements.