51 to 36.
Barack finally has his bounce. For weeks many political experts and pollsters have been wondering why the race between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain had stayed so tight, even after the Illinois senator wrested the nomination from Hillary Clinton. With numbers consistently showing rock-bottom approval ratings for President Bush and a large majority of Americans unhappy with the country's direction, the opposing-party candidate should, in the normal course, have attracted more disaffected voters. Now it looks as if Obama is doing just that.
And it's not just Obama that's bouncing, according to Newsweek, it's the Democratic Party in general:
Obama's current lead also reflects the large party-identification advantage the Democrats now enjoy—55 percent of all voters call themselves Democrats or say they lean toward the party while just 36 percent call themselves Republicans or lean that way.
And about that fictitious problem with women? Well, he leads McCain by 21 points in that demographic.
Obviously, it's still waaay early in the game, but the article points out that Obama is "running much stronger" than either Al Gore or John Kerry were at this point in the process.