Hope and change: McCain leads by two in Gallup, Obama down three days in a row in Rasmussen; Update: Polls are underestimating him, insists Pelosi

posted at 1:18 pm on August 26, 2008 by Allahpundit
Share on Facebook | regular view

Joementum!

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.

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 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.

Meanwhile, the Freepers are passing the new Rasmussen around as evidence that the convention’s a bust because it includes data collected last night. Eh. It’s a three-day rolling average and Michelle O’s speech aired late enough that surely they didn’t bother polling the eastern half of the country afterwards. If she did as well with the public as she did with pundits (even conservatives) we should see be a bump tomorrow. Believe it or not, spouse speeches do matter.

But in the meantime, consider the dull thud of the Biden pick confirmed:

Obama is supported by 78% of Democrats while McCain gets the vote from 85% of Republicans. The GOP hopeful also has a slight advantage among unaffiliated voters…

Today’s results are the first based entirely upon interviews conducted since Joe Biden was named to be Obama’s running mate.

Obama’s support has declined in each of the last three individual nights of polling. This may be either statistical noise or a reaction to the selection of Biden. If it’s the latter, it probably has less to do with Biden than Hillary Clinton. Forty-seven percent (47%) of Democratic women say Clinton should have been picked and 21% of them say they’ll vote for McCain.

Here’s Carville on CNN last night arguing that day one was, in fact, a big ol’ bust. This is a dream come true for Hillary, no? She gets her big moment tonight with two major national polls pointing squarely at the idea that she should have been named VP and that she, perhaps, alone can deliver the election to the Dems by rallying the PUMAs. Exit quotation: “She can do it, but that doesn’t mean we have to do it.”

Update: Madam Speaker spins like a gyroscope. Link via Ed who wonders what her logic could possibly be. A reverse Bradley effect? A late surge among young voters? Wishful thinking sparked by looming disaster in an otherwise gimme election?

Nope. Sample error!

The speaker said Obama and the other Democratic presidential candidates “have attracted millions of more voters — first-voters voters and many more voters who haven’t voted in a long time.

“Many of them are not even reachable by these pollsters,” Pelosi said. “These are polls of likely voters. Likely voters are people who have voted in the last two elections, and they are likely to vote again. They are not the universe of people who will vote on Nov. 4.”…

“We will own the ground Election Day,” she said.

Blowback

You must be logged in to post a comment.