It feels as though Obama's bump last week was due largely to the growing economic crisis. As public perception over the weekend was that the administration had moved to stave off disaster, some voters, whether they approved of the moves or not, may have shifted slightly in McCain's direction. With gathering resentment over what is being viewed as a taxpayer financing of bankers' greed (a viewpoint with which I only concur in small part) and renewed declines in the equity markets on Monday morning, it remains to be seen if there is a shift back in the other direction as today's surveys begin to be reflected in tomorrow's numbers. I would think that if they do, we won't really see it until Wednesday or Thursday.
Additionally, Obama seems to score additional points when the McCain campaign is recorded saying something mindbogglingly stupid or transparently mendacious; they managed to avoid that particular Scylla and Charybdis over the weekend (or at least nobody watches the news on weekends during football season), and McCain's numbers climb slightly as a result. Finally, I would suggest that pretty much everything this week is noise until the first debate Friday night.
So here are the numbers, and not a whole lot of further commentary on a slowish news cycle, other than a two point Obamaward bump in Diageo/Hotline which I can't begin to explain so I won't bother trying unless we see a lot more of it:
Diageo/Hotline Obama 47 McCain 42(45-44)
Gallup Obama 48 McCain 44 (49-45)
R2K Obama 49 McCain 43 (49--42)
Rasmussen Obama 48-McCain 47 (48-47)
There is, however, one significant move today--at a time when other polls are settling in with a slight erosion to Obama's recent gains, Diageo/Hotline comes in with a full two point bump in his direction, which also argues against my suspicion that the bailout, however unpopular with sections of the electorate and the commentariat it might be, has made people more comfortable that we're not heading towards utter financial cataclysm. There's no change in the Diageo polling on the economy, 55% on Sunday felt it the most important issue, up from 53% on Friday. That being said, they continue to confuse me with a closing of the gap in perceptions of which candidate is better equipped to handle the economy--if McCain is gaining there, surely he shouldn't be losing in the overall poll, unless their survey thinks Obama is better equipped to handle everything else, which would be significant indeed. Dont' know much about the methodology of this one, but it seems awfully inconsistent.
Some interesting state polling has been filtering through lately--PPP and Rasmussen both have the race in North Carolina having narrowed to being too close to call. Barring voter fraud, there are some states in the South where a possible reverse Bradley Effect might obtain, assuming the Obama campaign's voter registration efforts are as successful as their supporters claim. Obama's getting a crowd estimated locally in the area of 25,000 in Charlotte really doesn't surprise that much; he has been drawing huge crowds in any big city. If anything, people in the major media centers are surprised that Charlotte is a big city, and that's their damn problem. It is, and it's also a big city that largely grew into one on the back of the banking industry. If NC is truly in play, this would be bad news indeed for McCain, though the fact that he has begun to reallocate resources into the state implies that it is a threat his campaign is taking very seriously indeed.
R2K and The Miami Herald have McCain with razor-thin margins in Florida, while ARG has Minnesota having closed from being safely Obama to within the margin of error, even at a time when Al Franken has dramatically closed the gap on the incumbent Norm Coleman (with a third party candidate with excellent local name recognition in double digits) in the senatorial race. ARG also has, on the other side, Virginia as only a 2 point lead for McCain; he appears to have got a huge post-convention bump in the commonwealth, which has equally quickly dissipated--in fact, PPP and SUSA published polls last week showing Obama in front from 2 to 4 points. With so many key states in a state of such flux, it's probably safe to consider things in a holding pattern circling over Andrews AFB until after the debate.
Whither The Paleo-Conservatives?
While a lot of talk is tossed around about how McCain has solidified his conservative base with his running mate choice, how his military positions are also appealing to the right, what we're really seeing there is an appeal to the New Right, the neo-conservatives on foreign policy and Evangelicals on social issues. Although I don't know how relevant they are any more, I'm intrigued by the number of old-fashioned Reagan conservatives who are moving off the reservation. This weekend's commentary by George Will on ABC's This Week were particularly striking:
"I suppose the McCain campaign's hope is that when there's a big crisis, people will go for age and experience. The question is, who in this crisis looked more presidential, calm and un-flustered? It wasn't John McCain who, as usual, substituting vehemence for coherence, said 'let's fire somebody.' And picked one of the most experienced and conservative people in the administration, Chris Cox, and for no apparent reason... It was un-presidential behavior by a presidential candidate....John McCain showed his personality this week and made some of us fearful."
Again, I'm just not sure how relevant to a generation of no-expense-spared-if-its-for-our-cause self-proclaimed "conservatives" people like George Will are, but it's striking to see this sort of statement on national television from a commentator as well respected and consistently intellectually honest, whether one agrees with his opinions or not.
Back tomorrow with the packing up and heading back east edition, darn it all.
John
Herbert Hoover Quote Of The Day (TM):
We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land. (1928)