Zogby: McCain by two — thanks to his decision to suspend the campaign

Dick Morris thought it was a great idea and now Zogby thinks it was a great idea.

Ironclad proof that it was a terrible idea.

Among men, McCain leads by a 53% to 35% margin, up 15 points from the weekend survey. Among women, Obama leads by a 52% to 39% margin, up 5 points from the weekend survey.

The survey, half conducted before McCain’s announcement Wednesday that he would suspend his campaign to concentrate on the financial crisis and half conducted after the announcement, shows movement in McCain’s favor after his announcement. Before the announcement – which included about half of the total polling sample – Obama led by one point. But McCain led by 5 points in polling completed after his statement about the suspension of his campaign.

If you believe that men would swing 15 points in three days and that Obama has the support of 88 percent of Democrats when virtually every poll shows at least 20 percent bolting for McCain, then I guess you’ll believe that a 46.8/43.4 deficit over the weekend is now a 45.8/43.8 Maverick lead. There is one confidence-building detail, though: Zogby notes the same shift among independents towards McCain that a bunch of other polls are seeing. Clearly something’s happening to make centrists favor the GOP right now — possibly jitters over Obama’s inexperience as the financial crisis deepens — although I don’t know how that squares with the fact that (a) Obama leads McCain on the economy in most polls, (b) most battleground polls show Obama’s lead expanding post-crisis, not shrinking, and (c) that Pew poll I linked earlier indicates a break away from McCain among independents just in the last 72 hours or so. Zogby’s data contradicts that entirely.

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