Poll: McCain Now Leading Obama Among Independents
The new CBS News poll we posted on below has some numbers buried in the internals that might give Obama supporters pause.
They show that Obama's 10-point lead over McCain among independents has disappeared and has been replaced by an eight-point lead among them for the Arizona Senator, a fairly big swing. Here's the breakdown of independent registered voters, compared with those of last month:
McCain 46% (36% in Feb.)Obama 38% ( 46% in Feb.)
The claim that Obama can do better than Hillary against McCain among independents is central to the Obama camp's pitch. Here, however, McCain's support against Obama among indys has gone up 10 points, while Obama's has dropped by eight. Meanwhile, Hillary gets 36% of indys against McCain -- two points lower than Obama.
The shift could be the result of the Wright controversy, or it could be related to the fact that Hillary is attacking Obama's commander-in-chief cred regularly while McCain floats along as the uncontested GOP nominee.
Of course, the poll was taken March 15-18 -- almost all before Obama's big race speech and his subsequent interviews about it. And there are some good general election numbers for Obama. He beats McCain by a larger margin than Hillary does, and he has the highest favorability rating of all three.
Comments (132)