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Fourth Poll This Week Shows Obama With Solid National Lead
Another national poll this week has found Obama with a solid lead over McCain, suggesting that the race isn't necessarily tightening, as several polls late last week found.
The new numbers from Zogby: Obama 47%, McCain 40%, beyond the ±3.1% margin of error. This is on top of the CBS/NYT and ABC/WaPo polls, which respectively gave Obama a six-point and eight-point lead.
The internals also have a very surprising, and not entirely believable, number: Obama leads among Hispanics by an astonishing 71%-19% margin.
Late Update: Make that four polls, with the Quinnipiac survey giving Obama a nine-point lead.
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Zogby is dead to me. California. Enough said. But the size of the lead, 5-7%, is quite stable and consistent across a wide range of polls.
July 16, 2008 11:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
Zogby got killed on the early voting in California (where Survey USA excelled). He recovered in Missouri, North Carolina and Indiana.
July 16, 2008 11:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
Eric Kleefeld - check your facts - the WaPo/ABC poll gives Obama an EIGHT point lead - click on your link and read the headline!
July 16, 2008 12:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for correcting that in your story, Eric!
July 16, 2008 1:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Even George W speaks a little Spanish, and seemed like he knew the difference between a taco and an enchilada....Meanwhile, McCain has been the Senator from Arizona for what? 20 years? It's one of the most Hispanic States in the union, and he exudes about as much compassion and connection with the Hispanic community as one of the Minutemen.
July 16, 2008 11:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
Imagine the numbers if Kaine is on the ticket....Kaine is a very fluent Spanish speaker, plus brings VA and was born in MO. I think he's a pretty good pick.
July 16, 2008 12:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hmmmm. I expect to see the blaring headline from Drudge any minute now. I mean, he felt the need to post the "All tied up" headline over the weekend, so he's going to broadcast this, right?
Right?
And could someone please e-mail the results about Hispanics to NPR? A couple of their employees (Cokie Roberts, Don Gagne) seem to have trouble grasping the fact that Hispanics just aren't into John McCain...
July 16, 2008 11:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
NPR has seemed very Anti-Obama lately. Or atleast Pro-McCain. I've been shocked a couple of times by the way they gloss over Obama's proposals, and yet attempt to sell McCain's.
July 16, 2008 11:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
McCain has proposals? That's news to me...
July 16, 2008 11:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sure, open offshore drilling, increase atomic energy, reduce regulation approval time for refinerries, all while persuing future technologies...it's on his website.
http://www.johnmccain.com/
July 16, 2008 11:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
LOL. Those aren't policies. Those are positions.
July 16, 2008 11:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
By that I mean, he hasn't outlined the how and how much. Just pronounces he's for 'x'. And frankly, it's not clear if he's really for any of this stuff. He vacillates between positions so much, it's hard to know just what Mr. Straight Talk Express means...
July 16, 2008 11:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
"Atomic Energy"? Is that an attempted euphemism for nuclear? Or has your energy vocabulary simply not changed from 1955? That's a great campaign message for McCain: just revive Nixon's 1960 platform. He's going to fund atomic energy, close the missile gap, and face down Red China. Just make sure everyone listens to the debates on the radio instead watching it on the television set; I think then they'll think he won.
July 16, 2008 11:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
Last night, for the 8 PM (Eastern time zone) news update, they mentioned Bush, and played McCain's obnoxious statement (in McCain's own voice) about Obama's Middle East trip, and said nothing about Obama's campaign
Huh?
Sort of like yesterday's NY Times piece on the Obama trip to the Middle East. They reported on the details of the trip, and included multiple comments from Randy S. (the neocon McCain advisor) about the trip, and had nothing, literally, from the Obama campaign itself.
July 16, 2008 11:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
NPR has been farming out their political analysis to Fox News with Juan Williams and Mara Liasson.
July 16, 2008 11:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
Cokey Roberts is worthless. Her musty understanding of today's political landscape is rivaled only by Juan Williams' barely concealed bitterness at Obama's success. For real, what's up with that guy? His douchebagginess has increased exponentially over the last year.
July 16, 2008 11:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
He used to be so good when he was the host of TotN, but FOX has ruined him.
July 16, 2008 11:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
Worn down by the ironclad logic of Bill Kristol and Fred Barnes. What a bee-yotch!
July 16, 2008 11:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think that it is mostly Kristol. Close proximity that concentrated a mass of inanity is enough to dull even the sharpest wit.
July 16, 2008 11:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
What's happening to Juan Williams? Crabs in a bucket deal and jealousy. He wants to be top Negro, same with Jesse Jackson and Harold Ford.
July 16, 2008 1:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
BELIEVE!
Si se puede el poco guapo Eric
July 16, 2008 11:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
Modere su velocidad amigo, es mas temprano!
July 16, 2008 11:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
Es demasiado temprano.
July 16, 2008 11:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
Gracias.
July 16, 2008 11:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
De nada.
July 16, 2008 11:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
Es más tarde de lo que usted piensa
El final está cerca
Mail this puppy in about first week in September
July 16, 2008 11:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
Really diggin' that freetranslation.com, huh?
July 16, 2008 12:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm not at all surprised by the Hispanic number, but, then, I live in the midwest.
The media are amazingly parochial. If it isn't happening on either coast or DC, it isn't happening.
Here's what's happening. ICE are conducting massive raids on meat packing plants and other facilities that employ Hispanics, both "legal" and illegal".
They're ham-handed and using what can best be described as a "blunt instrument". It's reverberating among Hispanics. There will be blow-back and it will go against McCain.
July 16, 2008 11:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
The numbers are not really off. The other national polls released all show Obama with about 62% Latino support with McCain around 21%. That has been consistent for a while now. So it is entirely possible that Obama could achieve 70% Latino support this year which would help considerably in Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Florida, etc.
I think most people assume Obama would have Latino problems because of the incessant talk from the clueless TV pundits.
July 16, 2008 12:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
i hear and read all sorts of crazy things that blacks only support obama because he's black (margins of like 90%) and now that i see the margin of support sen. obama over sen. mccain, will this be construed as race-based political support?
July 16, 2008 11:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
I am glad we are ahead. I prefer to be ahead than to be behind. That said, I still do not understand why we even bother with national average polls. We do not elect presidents based on national averages, so how is this information at all relevant?
July 16, 2008 11:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
so how is this information at all relevant
Relevant it isn't, that's for sure, but it's also a lot more fun to read about than, say, the latest garblings of John (I can win wars in Czechoslovakia) McCain.
July 16, 2008 11:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
Electoral vote count more or less follows the popular vote lead, so instead of looking at 50 state-by-state polls it's much easier to just look at a national poll. Swing state polls are more important, but national polls are a big picture sort of thing.
July 16, 2008 1:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's the individual swing states that matter, and Obama is competitive in alot of them. One example:
http://www.pollster.com/08-VA-Pres-GE-MvO.php
July 16, 2008 11:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hey, thanks for that. It has been several weeks since last I looked at the VA trendline, so I had not realized that things are looking so good for us there right now.
July 16, 2008 11:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
Given McCain's sellout of the latino community over immigration, those numbers don't surprise me at all.
Expect Obama's support among latinos to hold steady and for turnout and interest to be higher than either of the previous two cycles.
July 16, 2008 11:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
I wouldn't be surprised if this number is an outlier, but not too much of one. McCain went to the National Council of La Raza and told them that he still favors comprehensive immigration reform, but understands now we have to "secure the border" first. Did he think they'd be too dumb to understand that means "I'd really like to help you, but I have to pander to the punishment-only wing to get the wingnut supporters I need, so screw you!"
(And I'm sure having wingnuts outside screaming racial epithets at attendees on their way in and protesting McCain's mere presence there didn't endear him to them either.)
July 16, 2008 12:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
During the primary, we were told Michigan would hold a grudge against Obama. Check this out:
http://www.pollster.com/08-MI-Pres-GE-MvO.php
July 16, 2008 11:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
While the polls cited are encouraging, let's not forget that republicans don't win elections, they steal them. And what is the latest from the Diebold polls; have they announced the winner yet?
July 16, 2008 12:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent point.
July 16, 2008 2:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
I guess this is a decent counterweight to the hysterical "ANOTHER NATIONAL POLL SHOWS RACE TIGHTENING" that we were graced with earlier this week.
July 16, 2008 12:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'd suggest we are watching a slow building trend to Obama, and I prefer that on a national basis to a sudden change in the polls. People who did not actively participate in the primary/caucus period are slowly taking a look, and moving in one or another direction, Hillary's voters are coming around, people talk it over in cafe's and around the office, and a solid trend slowly forms, and while things can change, it would take a major event to change the direction of this trend. If Obama leaves Denver with between a 10 and 15 point lead, and holds it during the Republican Bash -- he will be very well positioned to bring it home this fall. Yes, of course the state by state races count in the end, but watching a national trend line this far out is useful.
July 16, 2008 12:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Except that the Zogby poll shows that Obama now leads McCain by just 3% among Independents.
July 16, 2008 12:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree that the madia is underreporting what the ICE is doing. It has some elements of sadism like conducting the "operations" on the day of the Virgin of Guadalupe. This is the equivalent to arresting American families on Thanksgiving. The situation has some Catholic bishops claiming for these families, so this could affect the catholic vote in general too. People are starting to see what it really means being "tough on immigration" and of course they are not liking it. I am talking about the midwest.
July 16, 2008 12:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Slightly off topic, but I am as Catholic as they come, and I am totally unconvinced that there is such a thing as "the Catholic vote." I have never seen it. It seems to me that blue-collar Catholics vote just like blue collar non-Catholics. Rich white Catholics vote just like rich white non-Catholics. Black Catholics vote just like black non-Catholics. Etc and so forth.
Hispanic Catholics vote slightly more democratic than Hispanic non-Catholics, but that is mostly a reflection of the fact that a lot of Hispanic non-Catholics are trying to be non-Hispanic, and thus vote more like the demographic to which they aspire - white evangelical Protestants. I have never seen anyone actually run these numbers, but I would be willing to be that if you removed Hispanic evangelical Protestants from the "Hispanic" voter demographics, Catholic Hispanic voter patterns would look exactly like non-Catholic Hispanic voter patterns. In other words, I have not seen much of any evidence that being Catholic makes a difference in one's voting patterns.
July 16, 2008 12:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
msm now look at internals instead of who is in the lead.......... yesterday for example all news talked about was mccain was leading in 'He would be a good commander-
in-chief of the military'...........
July 16, 2008 12:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
But...but...I thought Obama was supposed to have a "Latino problem", that's what Hillary and the media kept telling us! You mean, they were full of shit??
*GASP!*
If those numbers hold up Latinos are going to be a solid Democratic voting block like African Americans, which would pretty much seal the fate of the Republican Party given how the demographics are changing in this country.
I guess racism and xenophobia doesn't pay off after all. =)
July 16, 2008 12:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
May be racism and xenophobia did pay ... for the dems. Time US lived up to its image of "melting pot".
July 16, 2008 12:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Anybody who gets more income from a paycheck than interest or investment returns is much more likely to vote for Obama. Of those who are living off the fat of the land or inherited wealth about half will vote for Obama too. It's a pretty simple equation and talking heads who say otherwise need a close horse race to keep their ratings up.
July 16, 2008 12:39 PM | Reply | Permalink