Media Presidential Polls: Tightening Race, Obama By 3

The new NBC/WSJ and CBS/NY Times polls are out and there are no radical changes from yesterday's poll tightening. As previously noted, we pay special attention to media polls because of their ability to drive narrative. (For a complete view of all the polls, see pollster.com and fivethirtyeight.com.)

One narrative that seems clear as a short term gain and long term pain: McCain is perceived as running a negative campaign.

By a nearly six-to-one margin, voters say Republican presidential candidate John McCain is running a negative campaign against his Democratic rival, Barack Obama, according to the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.

Nearly three in 10 voters, 29%, pointed to McCain as the candidate running a negative campaign, compared to just 5% who said Obama is running a negative campaign. McCain’s 29% rating is the highest of any one candidate in the previous two presidential elections according to the WSJ/NBC News survey.

In October 2004, 15% of voters identified both President George W. Bush and Democratic nominee John Kerry as negative campaigners. In July 2000, 8% identified Bush as a negative campaigner, while 13% said Vice President Al Gore was a negative campaigner.

However, 41% of respondents said neither McCain nor Obama is running a negative campaign, while 19% said both men are guilty of using negative tactics.

NBC/WSJ Presidential choice
          8/08 (6/08) (5/08) (4/08)
Barack Obama  45 (47) (47) (46)
John McCain   42 (41) (41) (43)

CBS/NY Times Presidential choice
          8/15-19/08 (7/31-8/5/08) (7/7-14/08)
Barack Obama  45 (45) (45)
John McCain   42 (39) (39)

For CBS/NY Times, it's 45 (45) Obama, 42 (39) McCain, also a tightening. The enthusiasm gap is 48-24 (guess who), and 28% of McCain's supporters are either 'he's the GOP nominee' or anti-Obama. And like the NBC/WSJ poll, more people perceive McCain as negative on Obama than positive on McCain. From NY Times (my bold):

There were indications that the more negative tone Mr. McCain adopted this summer could prove risky. Attempts by Republicans and the McCain campaign to cast Mr. Obama as elitist, or out of touch, do not seem to have moved popular opinion much yet against the Democrat, but they appear to have led more voters to view Mr. McCain as a negative campaigner.

Obama leads 20 points with 18-34s, McCain leads by 1 with everyone else.

Back to NBC/WSJ: Hillary Clinton's voters are half the 13% undecideds. See Ruth Marcus:

It's not that Obama has a problem with female voters. To the contrary, he does significantly better among women than among men. It sounds paradoxical, but the campaign, lagging badly among white men, may have its biggest growth potential among female voters. Women, especially women without a college education, tend to make up their minds later. Recent polls show twice as many women as men are undecided.

77% still think McCain will follow Bush's policies. Not good for McCain.

In any case, with both polls, there's a 3 point Obama lead, well within the MoE (usually +/- 3). That feels about right. McCain, as noted throughout this week, is consolidating his (smaller) base).

For perspective, I like Marc Ambinder.

McCain has given them something to think about this summer: Obama. And Obama hasn't returned the favor. He hasn't defined McCain in a visceral way, yet. He hasn't demonstrated that he can connect with working class white voters, although voters do find him empathetic enough. He can do both of these at the convention, and there are indications that he's doing the former in states with advertising.

With the convention coming up, there's lots of upside for Obama to do the same, and more talk about Lieberman for McCain. Now, that may be a head fake to distract and get some attention away from Obama's VP, and it would severely hurt with the religious right. But the fact is the next week belongs to Obama. We'll see what he does with it and how well the numbers look afterwards. McCain has built up some significant negatives, he's still tied to Bush, and the economy is still the driving force in this election. Think about what that means in the long run. From NY Times:

Slim majorities said neither candidate had yet made clear what he would do as president, suggesting that both Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain need to use their conventions to provide voters with a better sense of their plans for addressing the deteriorating economy, high energy prices, access to health care and national security.

Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, is still closely associated with the deeply unpopular President Bush: nearly half of those surveyed said they expected him to continue the Bush administration’s policies if he is elected president. But voters, by a wide margin, view Mr. McCain as better prepared to be president than Mr. Obama, and as more likely to be an effective commander-in-chief.

My read is that McCain is spoiling his own brand with independents in order to consolidate his own base (my prediction from way back was that he can't have both) while the Democrats take their time to make up their mind. We will see what happens, starting with the next eight days, but I don't think this is great news for McCain no matter how the media spin goes. For all his vaunted "great couple of weeks" McCain is still stuck in the low 40's and has an unenthusiastic base behind him (one that's smaller than Obama's.)

Plus, yesterday's LA Times/Bloomberg and Q-poll both show Obama winning with indies, and McCain is perceived as a negative camapigner closely associated with the unpopular George Bush (CBS/NY Times: 47% think he'll continue Bush's policies but only 9% want him to. 48% want him to be less conservative.)

Finally, it would seem this year, the Obama campaign, as has been posted at fivethirtyeight.com, is investing in the ground game rather than blowing their wad on negative ads with limited effect, the way McCain did.

Can McCain win? Maybe. Obama still has plenty of work to do, and there are no guarantees (and, in fact, the real campaign starts Monday) but McCain might just have hit his ceiling with these polls while Obama still may have a lot of upside.

^{Note on CBS poll: Phone numbers were dialed from RDD samples of both standard land-lines and cell phones.}