The waterfall of polls keeps coming and this time we get a new poll from the NYT (just posted) that has Obama up against McCain by 9 points. In addition it shows McCain with the lowest approval rating he has had since The Times had polled the question (1999) and Obama with his highest approval to date.
Poll Shows Obama, for First Time, Has Significant Lead
A CBS News Poll released Wednesday that Mr. Obama’s favorability rating, at 48 percent, is the highest it has ever been in polls conducted by CBS and The New York Times. At the same time, the number of voters who hold an unfavorable view of Mr. McCain — 42 percent — is as high as it has been since the CBS News and The Times began asking the question about Mr. McCain in 1999, the first time he ran for president.
The CBS News poll showed that Mr. Obama has a 9 percentage-point lead over Mr. McCain – 49 percent to 40 percent. It marks the first time that Mr. Obama has held a statistically significant lead over Mr. McCain this year in polls conducted by CBS or joint polls by CBS and The New York Times. And several polls taken in battleground states released by other organizations on Tuesday suggested that Mr. Obama was building leads in states including Florida, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
As if anybody needed further confirmation after the wave of polls recently. I suppose McCain will soon enough come out with a statement calling the NYT communist, therefore their polls also wrong!
But wait there's not only good news for Obama, but awful news for McCain: the anvil called Bush has also reached a record low:
The CBS News poll found that President Bush has tied the presidential record for a low approval rating – 22 percent, matching Harry Truman’s Gallup approval rating in 1952, when the country was mired in the Korean war and struggling with a stagnant economy. That finding put a new premium on Mr. McCain’s effort to distance himself from Mr. Bush, and suggests that Mr. Bush will continue to be a prominent figure in the Obama campaign’s advertisements attacking Mr. McCain.
That has got to hurt McCain in the home stretch. Bush reaches his lowest approval since his presidency just in time! Good luck Mr. 22%.
Unless something dramatic happens, I really think Obama will keep pulling away. But as everyone else says, we should not get complacent. Cliché, but true.