Sunday, August 24, 2008

The Biden Bump…

...went the wrong way.

The first national poll conducted after Barack Obama publicly named Joe Biden as his running mate suggests that the battle for the presidency between the Illinois senator and John McCain is all tied up.

In a new CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll released Sunday night, 47 percent of those questioned are backing Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominees, with an equal amount supporting his Republican opponent, McCain.

“This looks like a step backward for Obama, who had a 51 to 44 percent advantage last month,” said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “Even last week, just before his choice of Joe Biden as his running mate became known, most polls tended to show Obama with a single-digit advantage over McCain.”

So what’s the difference now?

It may be supporters of Hillary Clinton, who still would prefer the New York senator and former first lady as the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee.  Watch are Clinton backers on board? »

Sixty-six percent of Clinton supporters—registered Democrats who want Clinton as the nominee—are now backing Obama. That’s down from 75 percent in the end of June. Twenty-seven percent of them now say they’ll support McCain, up from 16 percent in late June.

“The number of Clinton Democrats who say they would vote for McCain has gone up 11 points since June, enough to account for most, although not all, of the support McCain has gained in that time,” Holland said.

(1) Comments
Posted by Owen at 2206 hrs
Politics + Politics - General

  1. Maybe it should be called the Biden sinkhole. I can’t believe some died in the wool dem is going to vote for McCain. They may stay home and sit on their hands, but crossing over to the “dark side” from their perspective isn’t something I see them doing.
    I wonder if this is just more blowback from O’s really really bad performance at Saddleback. Biden is a pretty safe pick for Obama - and the first rule of picking a VP is ‘do no harm.’
    I think this offers McCain an opportunity to pick a woman for his VP. It tweaks the Obama campaign for not picking Billary (which was a good move - she would be too distracting) The only issue is you are going to need a strong VP to stand up to Biden in the VP debate. (Although Benson trashed Quayle and that didn’t seem to affect Bush I very much.)

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 25, 2008 at 0936 hrs


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