Today's Daily Kos Research 2000 tracking poll has Obama up over McCain 52-40. All trackers are data from three days prior to posting, with the R2K numbers from today (yesterday's numbers in parentheses) and the other trackers from yesterday (previous day's data). LV=likely voter, RV=registered voter.
Obama McCain MoE +/- RV/LV
Today
Research 2000: 52 (51) 40 (41) 3 LV
Reuters/Zogby: 48 (48) 43 (44) 2.8 LV
Battleground: 51 (48) 43 (45) 3.5 LV [note several iterations released]
Rasmussen: 50 (50) 45 (45) 2 LV
Diageo/Hotline: 48 (47) 41 (41) 3.2 LV
Gallup: 51 (52) 41 (41) 2 RV
On successive days in the R2K poll, Obama was up +8 Tues, +12 Wed and +14 Thurs. The previous high Obama single day lead was +13. Wednesday and Thursday's sample were picking up post-debate polling. Obama's number remains steady at or above 50 since 9/29.
Please look at the internals. Sarah Palin's fav/unfav is - 18 and John McCain's is - 11. McCain's South lead is down to 10. These are poor numbers and bad trends with the last two days of polling out of three reflecting the debate. The markets, of course, are the markets, and media coverage of the Palin hate rallies is perhaps a factor as well.
Do those unfavorable numbers help with persuadables and undecideds? How many are there? Nate Silver has a terrific post looking at persuadable and uncommitted voter numbers over the years, using Gallup and Pew data. Here's an excerpt:
Since 1992, they [Pew] have included in their standard battery a question asking whether voters had decided against one or another of the major party candidates. For instance, as of Pew's most recent survey from late last month, 42 percent of voters said they had decided against Senator McCain, and 37 percent said they'd decided against Senator Obama. This leaves 21 percent of voters who are theoretically open to either major party candidate. We can compare these to the Pew numbers released in Early October 1992, Late September 1996, Early October 2000, and Early October 2004.
This year's numbers are right in line with past elections, again with the mild exception of 2004, when an unusually high fraction of the electorate had ruled out either George Bush or John Kerry. And remember, more voters have decided against McCain than Obama. The candidates to exceed the 42 percent of voters who have thus far said "no how, no way, no McCain" were George Bush, Sr. in 1992 (46 percent), Bob Dole in 1996 (44 percent), and John Kerry in 2004 (45 percent), all of whom lost their elections.
Past performance, of course, is no guarantee of future gains. Leaners tend to 'vote their lean', so how persuadable these voters are remains to be seen. Palin and McCain hope to capture as many as persuadables as possible, but their polarizing strategy (and erratic performance on the economic crisis) drives non-base people away (btw the McCain people are complaining abut the use of the word 'erratic', but it fits perfectly. It's McCain's style.)
Want to know more about who it drives away? Karen Tumulty:
In the latest TIME poll, which is part of our "How America Decides" series (it is featured in the upcoming dead-tree issue, though I don't think there's a link on TIME.com yet), Obama has opened up a 19-point lead (56-37%) over McCain among likely female voters. He even leads narrowly (48-45%) among white women--a group that George Bush won by 11 points in 2004. Among married women, whom Bush won 57-42% over John Kerry, Obama is ahead 51-42%. Our pollster Mark Schulman notes that no Democratic presidential candidate in recent history has had numbers that strong with married women and white women.
More in depth, Margie Omero at pollster.com explores how white men and white women responded to Sarah Palin, and then recovered. Charles Franklin added some great charts to Mark blumenthal's data collection and Omerto's analysis.
But hey, guess what? Obama wins the geek vote.
Geeks prefer Senator Barack Obama for U.S. president -- at least that relatively small cross-section of geeks who read The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society's Web site and its JOM member journal.
An online poll, up since Sept. 19, has Democrat Obama leading his Republican counterpart, Senator John McCain, by a 61 percent to 37 percent margin as of late Thursday.
By late Thursday, more than 185 people had voted in the poll, which is open to anyone. Yes, that's 185 -- no zeros missing. The poll continues until Oct. 15.
Whatever happens, we'll always have the The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society to thank for their support. And if you lose TMM&MS, you've lost America.
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