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This is not a trick question.
If you had three choices regarding the laws governing same-sex marriage, what would you choose?
1. Same-sex couples should be allowed legally to marry.
2. Same-sex couples should be allowed legally to form civil unions but not marry.
3. Same-sex couples should not be allowed to obtain legal recognition of their relationships.
Well, the pollsters at Quinnipiac University posed that question, which is certain to become more prominent as the presidential general election campaign unfolds, to 1,783 Americans across the country.
And they found that:
1. 32% support same-sex marriage.
2. 33% support civil unions.
3. And 29% said no legal recognition should exist for same-sex couples.
Can't get much closer than that. But wait, there's more to this poll, and our colleague Katie Fretland over at the Swamp has the details here.
--Andrew Malcolm
Democrats like to say that, this year, they finally will dig into the Republicans’ traditional advantage among evangelical voters. After all, social conservatives are skeptical of John McCain, and Barack Obama seems so comfortable talking about his faith (at least when his former pastor isn’t involved).
But a new analysis from the nonpartisan Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, finds that Obama is doing just as badly among white evangelical voters as his party’s 2004 nominee was at this point.
The report, based on a national Pew poll conducted last month, found that just 25% of white evangelicals support Obama, compared to the 26% who said they backed John F. Kerry’s candidacy in the summer of 2004. (Kerry wound up winning just 21% of that group, according to exit polls.)
The Pew analysis found McCain winning 61% of white evangelicals, and most of the remaining 14% of those polled said they did not know what candidate they would support. McCain’s big margin was not necessarily good news for the presumptive GOP candidate, since President Bush at this point four years ago was winning 69% (and, according to exit polls, took 78% in the end).
The bottom line is that neither Obama nor McCain is where they'd hope to be among this important voting bloc. And both are courting it heavily –- Obama with his recent speech endorsing government funding for faith-based social service agencies and McCain through his support for a California measure to ban same-sex marriage.
-- Peter Wallsten
No wonder everyone wants to be the candidate of change. In a new Time/Rockefeller Foundation poll, 85% of those who replied believe that the country is on the wrong track.
Among blacks and Latinos, dissatisfaction levels are even higher: the figure among blacks is 96% and among Latinos it's 88%.
The solution? As Time reports, the public seems to want big government. In the poll, 82% favor public works projects and 70% say more government programs should help people now struggling.
In the meantime, families are tightening their budgets. Nearly two-thirds of those surveyed -- 64% -- said they cut entertainment or vacation expenses this year.
-–Stuart Silverstein
For those still harboring hopes that California will be hotly contested in the November presidential election, it’s time for a pity party.
The latest statewide poll, conducted by the Field organization, shows Democrat Barack Obama extending his lead in the state and now trouncing Republican John McCain by 24 points, 54% to 30%. In May, Obama’s lead was a smaller 17 points, and in January, an even slighter 7 points.
The Field poll, conducted July 8-14, also demonstrated an enthusiasm gap in California: 51% of Obama’s supporters said they were very enthusiastic about him, whereas only 17% of McCain’s made the same claim.
Obama led strongly among Democrats, and McCain held a less-dominant lead among Republicans. But among the nonpartisan voters highly coveted by candidates, Obama led 64% to 18%.
McCain has repeatedly stated that he will contest the state in the general election. But most political observers believe that vow reflects a desire to keep voters and donors happy rather than any serious intention to compete in California, where running statewide ads costs millions of dollars per week that can be more optimistically spent elsewhere. Only 32.5% of the state’s voters are registered as Republicans, according to the most recent voter statistics.
Until 1992, California was reliably Republican in presidential contests. Bill Clinton that year became the first Democrat to win the state since Lyndon Johnson in 1964. But changes in the state’s voting pool, including a rise in moderate voters that coincided with a conservative streak in GOP nominees, turned the state toward the Democrats.
In 2004, Democrat John Kerry beat George W. Bush by 10 points.
The state is hardly homogeneous, however, as the Field poll showed again. Coastal voters, for example, favored Obama 62% to 24%, whereas inland residents backed McCain by a 44%-35% margin. Unfortunately for McCain, inland voters make up less than one-third of the electorate.
Still, Obama won almost all demographic groups, including 51% of men to McCain’s 35%, and 56% of women to McCain’s 27%. He won overwhelming margins among Asian, black and Latino voters, and won white voters by 47% to 37%. Women and Latinos had powered Hillary Clinton's victory over Obama in the February California presidential primary.
-- Cathleen Decker
Remember that Newsweek magazine poll a few weeks back that portrayed a big advantage for Democrat Barack Obama in his contest with Republican John McCain for the White House?
Well, forget it.
The newest Newsweek poll shows pretty much what the daily tracking poll of the Gallup organization has been recording for some time now: a virtual tie between the two major-party candidates for president among voters surveyed nationally.
Newsweek says the virtual tie portrayed in its latest poll, as compared with the 15-point lead that Obama enjoyed in a poll reported June 20, is "hard to explain."
"A month after emerging victorious from the bruising Democratic nominating contest, some of Barack Obama's glow may be fading," Newsweek now reports. "In the latest Newsweek Poll, the Illinois senator leads Republican nominee John McCain by just 3 percentage points, 44% to 41%.
"The statistical dead heat is a marked change from last month's Newsweek Poll, where Obama led McCain by 15 points, 51% to 36%.
"Obama's rapid drop comes at a strategically challenging moment for the Democratic candidate," Newsweek adds. "Having vanquished Hillary Clinton in early June, Obama quickly went about repositioning himself for a general-election audience -- an unpleasant task for any nominee emerging from the pander-heavy primary contests and particularly for a candidate who'd slogged through a vigorous primary challenge in most every contest from January until June.
"More seriously, some Obama supporters worry that the spectacle of their candidate eagerly embracing his old rival, Hillary Clinton, and traveling the country courting big donors at lavish fund-raisers, may have done lasting damage to his image as an arbiter of a new kind of politics."
There's more to this surprising statistical midsummer turn of events, and our colleague Mark Silva has the full details in the Swamp.
-- Andrew Malcolm
The folks at the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press released a poll Thursday tracking the "passion gap" between Barack Obama and John McCain, which we already told you about.
But there's an interesting tidbit buried deep within the poll results that should have some bells going off inside McCain headquarters. Or maybe they were already going off, and that's part of the reason Rick Davis ceded some campaign turf to Steve Schmidt.
The finding has to do with measuring how the candidates are making the sale. Obama -- doing all right. McCain -- well, let's let the Pew folks tell it: A solid majority (56%) give the Obama campaign letter grades of A or B for the job he is doing to convince the American public to vote for him, while only 32% say the same of the McCain campaign. More than a third (35%) offer a grade of C to McCain's campaign so far, and nearly as many (30%) say the campaign has earned a D or F.
The grades voters give to the Obama campaign for the job it is doing convincing them to vote for him are the highest measured for any candidate over the past four election cycles. In June 2004, for example, just 39% gave Bush's efforts an A or B; even fewer gave high grades to Kerry's campaign (31%). In contrast, McCain's middling grades are slightly lower than those awarded to Bush in both 2000 and 2004. McCain's campaign does garner higher grades than the 1996 Dole campaign, which only 22% graded highly.
In this regard, the 2008 campaign has the largest disparity in high grades for the Democratic and Republican candidates over the past four election cycles (24 points). The gap between the grades for Obama and McCain is even larger than for Bill Clinton and Bob Dole in July 1996; at that time, 37% gave Clinton an A or B, while just 22% gave top grades to Dole.
The differences in the ratings of the two presidential campaigns are reflected in the opinions of their partisans. Nearly eight-in-ten Democratic voters (79%) give the Obama campaign letter grades of A or B for the job he is doing to convince the American public to vote for him, and a smaller majority of Republican voters (54%) give high marks to the McCain campaign. More independents give A or B grades to the Obama campaign than to the McCain campaign (49% v. 31%). In addition, while more than a third of Republicans (35%) give high grades to Obama, just 16% of Democrats give high grades to McCain.
McCain was asked about the poll Thursday -- specifically the bit about voters being more excited about Obama at this stage than they are about him. His response goes a long way toward  explaining another finding from that poll: "Relatively few voters" think the candidates have been too negative. But at the same time, McCain's comment indicates that his focus is on the war in Iraq and national security when polls show most of the country is more concerned with the economy -- whining or not.
Said McCain: "I admire and respect the campaign that Sen. Obama has run. He has done
a fine job in motivating many, many people. I am confident that as we
go through this campaign that I will convince the majority of voters in
this country that I am the person to lead this nation through very
difficult times. ... Sen. Obama didn’t support the surge, wanted
us to pull out, said that it would fail. I supported it when it was the
toughest thing to do. I believe that my record on national security and
keeping this country safe is there, and the American people will
examine our records, and I believe that I will win."
-- Scott Martelle
Top photo: Democrat Barack Obama. Credit: Jae C. Hong / Associated Press
Bottom photo: Republican John McCain. Credit: Carolyn Kaster / Associated Press
A couple of weeks back, we spotlighted what we termed the "passion gap" in the presidential race -- the dramatic difference in the enthusiasm levels among Barack Obama supporters and John McCain backers, as delineated in a L.A. Times/Bloomberg poll.
Now comes a new survey, conducted by the estimable Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, that focuses on much the same -- what it terms "a substantial engagement advantage" that Democrats currently enjoy over Republicans.
And that, the poll says, "may significantly alter the composition of the November electorate."
Our friend Frank James at the Swamp has more of this and other aspects of the new poll.
It's not all good news for Obama.
His lead over McCain among voters is eight percentage points (48% to 40%) -- better than other recent surveys have found but certainly not substantial. And the Pew poll cautions that Obama "has a unity problem. [Hillary] Clinton’s former supporters have moved in Obama’s direction since the primaries ended, but significant numbers remain undecided or say they might vote for McCain in the fall.
To solve that problem, Obama probably needs to avoid the type of memory lapse he suffered Wednesday night at a fundraiser.
-- Don Frederick
When Barack Obama's campaign set up its Fight the Smears website a few weeks back to refute baseless -- yet persistent -- rumors about the candidate and his wife, it sparked a spate of commentary about the concept (see here, here and here).
 Our favorite take on it, which we ran across while catching up on our reading over the holiday weekend, came from Christopher Beam in an article on Slate. Beam's brainstorm: Obama and his aides should focus on perpetuating rumors they don't want to correct.
Such as: "Barack Obama wears a FLAG PIN at all times. Even in the shower."
"Barack Obama is a PATRIOTIC AMERICAN. He has one HAND over his HEART at all times. He occasionally switches when one arm gets tired, which is almost never because he is STRONG."
"Barack Obama has the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE tattooed on his stomach. It's upside-down, so he can read it while doing sit-ups."
"Barack Obama's new airplane includes a conference room, a kitchen, and a MEGACHURCH."
These are just some of the gems from Beam; the others are well worth checking out.
On the subject of flag pins, a new poll confirms what Obama learned -- presidential candidates eschew them at their own political peril.
The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey found that 41% of Americans believe contenders for the White House should always have a flag pin on a suit lapel, and 13% think the accessory should be worn frequently. The rest of the results: sometimes, 16%; only occasionally, 19%; never, 9%.
Opinions on proper display while showering were not sought.
-- Don Frederick
Photo credit: Associated Press
Might David Vitter belong to that rare breed of politicians who survive the type of scandal that sink most others (see Spitzer, Eliot, and Fossella, Vito)?
Chances are we won't know for sure until 2010, when the Republican senator from Louisiana is up for re-election. But based on a new poll by the Baton Rouge-based Southern Media & Opinion Research firm, Vitter has reason for optimism that he will keep his job.
When we last left Vitter -- almost exactly a year ago -- he was confessing, vaguely, to a "very serious sin" that involved his association with a D.C.-based prostitution ring. Then a New Orleans-based prostitute alleged that she and the senator had once been especially good friends (a connection Vitter denied).
Perhaps the best-remembered moment stemming from the scandal occurred when Vitter held a news conference in Metairie, La., to try to put it behind him (fat chance) and was joined at the podium by his wife, Wendy -- whose pained expression said it all (he didn't look especially happy, either).
In Washington, Vitter has kept a mostly low profile since then. But he's kept going about his senatorial business and, in Louisiana, his standing appears about the same as it was before the commotion erupted.
The new survey of the state's voters found that 55% view him favorably, 38% unfavorably. In April of 2007, a poll by Southern Media put his numbers at 52% favorable, 32% unfavorable.
One of the firm's pollsters, Bernie Pinsonat, told us Vitter has benefited from a reservoir of goodwill he could draw upon. For instance, many voters well remember that as a state legislator several years ago, he led the charge for highly popular term limits.
Nor has he lost that sense of what the public wants.
Louisianans became incensed recently ...
Read more David Vitter seems to have rolled with the punch of last year's sex scandal »
Our colleague Dan Morain chatted up American Values' Gary Bauer Tuesday about gay marriage and Barack Obama's letter stating his opposition to a California ballot initiative (John McCain supports it). Morain points out that two other states will have similar measures on their fall ballot -- Arizona and Florida. While polls show California pretty safe for Obama and Arizona similarly so for McCain, a gay-marriage fight in Florida could have scale-tipp ing consequences.
Bauer, founder of the conservative Campaign for Working Families political action committee, said he hasn't decided whether to donate to California's "incredibly important" measure. "If the pro-same-sex marriage forces cannot win in California and Florida, it means that the people of this country still are resistant to radical social change," Bauer said.
Bauer said he was "somewhat heartened when Barack Obama said … that it should be a state decision" but that given Obama's recent statements opposing the California measure, "the idea that he is agnostic about this question doesn’t hold up any more."
"It is a major difference between the two candidates," Bauer said. "Before it is all over, we’ll have a great debate on tax policy, on foreign policy and on this fundamental question of what is the status of marriage."
Bauer said that John McCain and Barack Obama "did not seem far apart a few months ago" on gay marriage. "Now they are quite at odds with each other. It is something that voters in other states are looking at. When you have a significant number of other states that have voted to preserve marriage, it is the sort of thing that could hurt Obama."
Most significant: Obama "has very much been making a play for evangelical voters, suggesting that there would be no reason that an evangelical should vote against him. It becomes harder to make that case."
-- Scott Martelle
Photo provided by American Values
Well, we'll admit it, we're suckers for polls, and a recent one that our cousins at The Swamp tipped us to is interesting -- showing that Barack Obama is tapping a potentially rich vein in trying to tie John McCain to George Bush.
The Gallup/USA Today poll found that 68% of voters said they were concerned when asked whether they thought McCain would pursue "policies that are too similar to what G eorge W. Bush has pursued." Of those polled, 49% said they were "very concerned."
As the poll analysis points out: "It is clearly a delicate balancing act for McCain, as Bush remains relatively popular with the Republican base. While only 28% of Americans approve of the job Bush is doing as president, a majority of Republicans (60%) still do. Bush's approval rating among current McCain supporters is slightly lower, at 55%."
Dive deeper into the poll and something else interesting emerges -- people aren't all that keen on change, either. Some 49% said they were concerned when asked whether "Obama would go too far in changing the policies that George W. Bush pursued." Of those polled, 30% said they were "very concerned."
So the advantage for the moment goes to change -- in moderation. Which might help explain Obama's embrace Tuesday of the concept behind the Bush administration's faith-based initiative program.
-- Scott Martelle
Lost in the brouhaha over remarks on CBS' "Face the Nation" by retired Gen. Wesley Clark that discounted John McCain's military record as a presidential qualification -- comments that still dominated much of the political discussion today -- was Joe Lieberman continuing to distance himself from the Democratic Party that nominated him for vice president eight years ago.
 The senator from Connecticut has become one of McCain's most visible and vocal surrogates, and he played that role to the hilt Sunday in an appearance preceding Clark's. Lieberman -- who still caucuses with Senate Democrats, giving them their one-vote majority in the chamber -- pressed the case he's made before that Barack Obama exemplifies a party that has lost its way on foreign policy.
In a time when it doesn't take much to get mentioned as a vice presidential prospect, Lieberman has been bandied about as a potential McCain running mate. That buzz may grow louder short-term, as Lieberman accompanies McCain on a brief trip that began this evening to Colombia and Mexico.
Still, the Lieberman-as-veep scenario seems a stretch -- his liberal record on a raft of domestic issues, including abortion, would only intensify his friend's problems with the GOP base.
But he is a likely hire for a high-profile post in a McCain administration. And, based on a poll of voters in his homestate released today, it may be time for a career move on his part.
The survey by the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute found his job approval/disapproval rating basically a wash -- 45% gave him good marks, 43% gave him negative ones (the poll's margin of error is plus-or-minus 2 percentage points).
Lieberman's standing is down from the ratings he received in a March poll, when 52% expressed approval and 35% disapproval.
The new figures also represent the first time his approval rating has dropped below 50% in 14 years of polling by the institute and, overall, his lowest score ever, said the survey's director, Douglas Schwartz.
Most dramatic is the breakdown in party attitudes toward a man who, if Al Gore had won the White House in 2000, presumably would have been next in line as a Democratic presidential nominee.
Among Connecticut Republicans, 70% give him favorable job ratings, 26% were unfavorable. Among the state's Democrats -- who bounced him as their Senate nominee in the 2006 primary, only to see him win re-election as an independent -- 62% rated him unfavorably, 18% favorably.
-- Don Frederick
Photo credit: Associated Press
Further evidence that the economy is taking a severe beating: Starbucks is closing 600 outlets and could cut 12,000 jobs as customer visits have declined. True addicts see Starbucks coffee as their lifeblood but for most people it's a luxury, and with the economy moribund and a gallon of gas costing more than a la tte, people are deciding it's a luxury they can do without.
Now we're sure there will be snarky comments posted here about Barack Obama supporters going into withdrawals, shaking behind the wheel of their Volvos. But 12,000 cut jobs is a big hit, and judging by the staffs you see at the stores, it will put a lot of college kids, or young adults in that general age group, out of work. Add them to the already unemployed construction workers, auto workers -- just fill in the blank ________.
Yes, the Iraq war is a crucial issue for the nation, and the world. But poll after poll shows that at least for now, four months away from election day, it's the economy that has people's attention. And news like this will keep it alive until the picture improves.
The question for Obama and John McCain is who can forge the better -- or at least more convincing -- policy proposals.
-- Scott Martelle
In two new articles, pollsters put the attitudes of A) non-Latino white voters and B) Latino voters toward Barack Obama under a microscope.
In the Wall Street Journal today, Peter Brown of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute writes that he finds it "more than a little ironic that it has taken the first African-American to win a major party presidential nomination to make clear to everyone what has been the case for more than 40 years in presidential elections: Democrats have a problem with white voters."
Brown doesn't specify that the white voters to which he and other pollsters refer excludes those of Latin American descent. But we checked with him and that's the case.
In his piece, which can be read in full here, he notes that no Democratic presidential candidate since Lyndon Johnson, in his 1964 landslide, has won a majority of this white vote. He argues: "For those voters, especially ones without college degrees, the fact that Sen. Obama is black may not be as much a disqualifier as his background as a Democrat from the Frost Belt with no national security or executive experience and a voting record judged by the nonpartisan National Journal as the Senate’s most liberal during 2007."
The Chicago Tribune's Swamp blog has its take on Brown's column here.
On the Huffington Post Saturday, two members of the Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Democratic polling firm made their case for debunking the notion that the Latino vote is up for grabs in November's election.
Mark Feierstein and Ana Iparraguirre write that Obama's relatively weak performance among Latinos in his primary battle with Hillary Clinton (who dominated among those voters) "has helped fan the idea that he has a Latino problem or that Hispanics are disinclined to vote for black candidates."
Not so, they contend. They note that national polls have shown that Obama "is running well ahead of John McCain among Hispanics, and significantly better than John Kerry did against George Bush in 2004."
That may be how it plays out ...
Read more Views of whites, Latinos toward Barack Obama analyzed »
As long as the folks at the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute were in the field gauging voter opinion on the presidential race in four key swing states, they also conducted surveys on closely watched Senate contests in two of those locales.
The results in the White House battle, released late last week, were pretty positive for presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama and attracted wide attention. The less-noticed findings for the Senate matchups in Minnesota and Colorado painted a mixed picture for Obama's party.
In Minnesota, one-term Republican incumbent Norm Coleman led onetime "Saturday Night Live" cast member and writer Al Franken by 10 percentage points, 51% to 41%.
Franken ended up winning the state's Democratic Senate nomination more easily than expected, but during the spring he took flak over back corporate taxes he owed in 17 states and a raunchy article he wrote for Playboy magazine several years ago (when comedy still was his prime occupation).
The new poll found that Franken has not consolidated the Democratic vote in Minnesota as well as Coleman has his GOP base. But the former funnyman's big problem is with independents -- he trailed Coleman among this bloc by 20 percentage points.
Democratic hopes of adding to their slender Senate majority look better in Colorado, according to the Quinnipiac survey.
There, in a fight for an open seat currently held by a Republican who did not seek reelection, Democratic Rep. Mark Udall led his Republican foe, Bob Schaffer, by 10 points, 48% to 38%.
Schaffer famously stumbled out of the gate when, in his first television ad, an image he referred to as Pike's Peak in Colorado actually was Mt. McKinley in Alaska.
-- Don Frederick
The national polls taking the temperature of the presidential race will ebb and flow (much as they have during the last week). The two candidates will be on their game and off. Attention will be lavished on Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Colorado and the other states deemed critical to the contest's outcome.
It all matters for naught. John McCain peered down the road Friday while speaking to reporters, including The Times' Bob Drogin, at an auto plant in Lordstown, Ohio, and laid out the following scenario: "I’m the underdog in this race. ... I’m behind. I’ve got to catch up and get ahead. And I expect to do that about 48 hours before the general election."
That view is totally in character for McCain. As The Ticket noted earlier this week, the former fighter pilot "is right where he wants to be, behind his opponent. You can't shoot someone down from in front."
Indeed, McCain's embrace of the underdog role was the topic of one of the video chats that Matt Welch, author of "McCain: Myth of a Maverick," recently had with The Ticket's Andrew Malcolm (see below).
-- Don Frederick
Our cousins over at The Swamp have an item this morning spotlighting just how nagging a problem Barack Obama faces i n trying to woo some disappointed Hillary Clinton supporters in facing off against John McCain. It seems a couple of notable New Hampshire Democrats -- James McConaha, a former Clinton administration farm official in New Hampshire, and his Democratic activist wife, Valery Mitchell -- have no intention of hopping aboard the Unity bus.
Picking up a story in the Nashua Telegraph, the couple has agreed to lead Democrats for John McCain. And that's not the only anti-Obama group out there composed of Clinton supporters. In fact, though polls show most of her backers moving to Obama, there is a large and vociferous crowd out there that refuses to go along.
Whether this is enough of a counter tide to have an effect in November is the big question, of course. And it will matter most in the battleground states -- a few thousand Clinton supporters voting for McCain here in California, for instance, isn't likely to turn the state red. But it could be an issue in states where the red-blue divide is narrower.
Regardless, campaigns are an amalgamation of a lot of moving parts, and it can't be a good distraction for the Obamans to have to go out and try to run down strays from the Democratic herd.
-- Scott Martelle
Eagerly awaited polls from four key states will be welcomed by the Barack Obama camp today -- he leads in every case (though his edge over John McCain in Colorado is within the margin of error, barely).
Here are the results from the surveys conducted by the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, in conjunction with washingtonpost.com and the Wall Street Journal: Colorado (9 electoral votes): Obama 49%, McCain 44%
Michigan (17 electoral votes): Obama 48%, McCain 42%
Minnesota (10 electoral votes): Obama 54%, McCain 37%
Wisconsin (10 electoral votes): Obama 52%, McCain 39%
And here's an attention-grabbing quote from Peter A. Brown, the polling institute's assistant director: "November can't get here soon enough for Sen. Barack Obama. He has a lead everywhere, and if nothing changes between now and November he will make history."
But then Brown hedges his bet, adding that Obama "should not be picking out the drapes for the Oval Office just yet. His lead nationally, and double digits in some key states, is not hugely different from where Sen. John Kerry stood four years ago at this point" in his ultimately unsuccessful bid to unseat President Bush.
Kerry carried Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin, and Obama almost assuredly needs to hold them as part of assembling the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House. Bush won Colorado; if Obama triumphs in all the states that went for Kerry, a win in Colorado would put him 10 electoral votes away from 270.
More of what Brown has to say and a raft of polling data can be perused here. The Swamp's take on this story is available here.
Perhaps the politician who will be most chagrined by the results is Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty. He is widely mentioned as a vice presidential prospect on McCain's ticket, but his stock will drop if, as the summer progresses, it continues to appear unlikely that his home state is in play.
-- Don Frederick
Republican Sen. John McCain, a retired Naval aviator, Naval Academy graduate, war veteran and son and grandson of admirals, draws a very high level of confidence among American voters in his ability to serve as commander in chief -- fully 80% of those surveyed say McCain could handle the top job.
Democratic Sen. Barack Obama, who never has served in the military and is a graduate of Harvard Law, barely passes the 50% mark on this question -- with 55% of those surveyed telling the Gallup Poll they think Obama can handle the top job.
At a time when other polls are starting to portray growing advantages for Obama in his Nov. 4 contest with McCain for the White House, the Gallup Poll's daily tracking survey has returned to a dead-even matchup between the two: Obama 45%, McCain 45%.
""McCain clearly enjoys a more broad-based positive reputation with Americans for military matters than does Obama," says Gallup's Lydia Saad. "But it's unclear how this will benefit him in the election,."
Our pal Mark Silva has the background and more details in this Swamp item.
--Andrew Malcolm
A well-known Republican research firm argues that the voter pool tapped for the new L.A. Times/Bloomberg poll was too skewed toward Democrats -- a challenge that causes the GOP strategists to question the double-digit lead the survey gave Barack Obama over John McCain.
The case against the poll, laid out in a memo sent out today by Public Opinion Strategies, in turn sparked a response from survey director Susan Pinkus, who stood by its methodology and findings.
Part of the dispute reflects a long-standing disagreement between independent pollsters and partisan operatives (something The Times wrote about four years ago) -- whether or not to tinker with a poll to make sure its respondents reflect the nation's political composition at some fixed point, such as the most recent election.
Pinkus, like most nonpartisan pollsters, rejects that notion. Discussing the current survey, she says, "The poll was weighted slightly, where necessary, to conform to the Census Bureau’s proportions of sex, race, ethnicity, age and national region. The poll was NOT weighted for party identification since party ID is a moving variable that changes from one election to another, or when one party may be favored more than the other."
As a result, the survey simply asked respondents their party affiliation or inclination, and came up with this breakdown: 39% Democratic, 22% Republican, 8% something else, 4% refused to say.
There's the rub, insists the memo from Bill McInturff, Liz Harrington and David Kanevsky. They write that these figures, and the 17 percentage-point gap between the two parties, are "greatly out of line with what most other surveys are reporting."
The memo cites several other recent polls in which the party ID gap ranged as low as plus 6 percentage points for the Democrats to as high as plus 14.
It then asserts: "McCain’s double-digit deficit is not a reflection of reality, simply a result of an unusual party identification result in this survey.... If party identification on the L.A. Times survey is recalculated to ... 29% GOP / 39% Dem / 27% Ind / 5% Don’t Know/Refused, the ballot would be 40% McCain – 47% Obama."
Pinkus responds that ...
Read more Too large a Democratic advantage in new L.A. Times/Bloomberg poll? »
The combative Democratic presidential primary ended with Bill and Hillary Clinton essentially tied ... with each other (though perhaps with a slight edge for the ex-president).
In the new L.A. Times/Bloomberg national poll, 52% of registered voters expressed positive feelings about Bill and 49% said the same about Hillary -- a gap well within the survey's margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Negative attitudes toward the two also are about the same -- 36% gave Bill the thumbs down, while 39% said they didn't much care for Hillary.
But Bill gains an advantage when comparing the gap between their positive and negative numbers. The margin for him is plus 16 points, for her its plus 10 points.
The poll gave Barack Obama a double-digit lead in his White House matchup with John McCain, and this preference among voters is reflected, not surprisingly, in their attitudes toward the two.
In the survey, 59% said they felt positively about Obama while 27% expressed negative feelings -- a difference of plus 32 points.
For McCain, the numbers were 47% positive, 35% negative, a difference of plus 12 points.
The overarching political trends McCain is grappling with were underscored by the results for three similar questions.
Asked about the Democratic Party, 51% said they felt positively about it, 30% negatively, a margin of plus 21 points.
The numbers for the Republican Party were 29% positive, 53% negative, a margin of minus 24 points.
But here's the major drag on all things GOP. Asked about President Bush, 24% gave him positive marks, 68% negative ones -- a difference of minus 44 points.
-- Don Frederick
Photo credit: Associated Press
We noted in an earlier post that for John McCain, a silver lining in the new L.A. Times/Bloomberg poll that put Barack Obama solidly ahead in their presidential race was voter attitudes about which candidate has the "right experience" to serve in the Oval Office.
McCain led Obama by 20 percentage points on this question (No. 11 on this chart).
The presumptive GOP nominee and his advisors don't need a survey to be persuaded that they enjoy a big edge on the experience issue and that the more they are able to plant seeds of doubt about Obama's seasoning, the more likely McCain can overcome the prevailing political winds and win the White House.
But on Tuesday, a guest column appeared in Newsweek disputing what has been taken as a given in the campaign: McCain's experience advantage. It argues, provocatively, that the eight years Obama served in the Illinois state legislature before winning a U.S. Senate seat in 2004 might trump McCain's 22 years as a senator from Arizona.
The case is made by Alan Ehrenhalt, executive editor of Governing magazine, which trains its eyes on state and local government (and, not surprisingly, has a rather small and specialized circulation).
Ehrenhalt concedes that, at first blush, state legislative experience would strike most Americans as a "kind of irrelevant" preparation for the presidency. But he then writes that "looking back on quite a few years covering Congress, and an almost equal number of years following legislatures, I'm drawn to some slightly curmudgeonly comments about what it is that U.S. senators do, and what it is that state legislators do."
Observations that follow include: "Twenty-first century U.S. senators are, virtually by the nature of the job, gadflies. They flit from one issue to another, generally developing little expertise on any of them; devote a large portion of their day to press conferences and other publicity opportunities; follow a daily schedule printed on a 3x5 card that a member of their staff has prepared; depend even more heavily on staff for detailed and time-consuming legislative negotiation that they are too busy to attend..."
"By contrast, what do state legislators do? ... At their best, they keep all the state's significant issues in mind; it is possible to do that in a state legislature in a way that is not possible in Washington. During the years that Obama served in Springfield, 1997-2005, he was forced to wrestle with the minutiae of healthcare policy, utility deregulation, transportation funding, school aid, and a host of other issues that are vitally important to America's coming years, but that U.S. senators are usually able to dispose of with a quick once-over. State legislators have to do this largely on their own, without ubiquitous staff guidance, because staffing is not lavish even in the more professional state capitols."
"...For a smart, curious and hard-working young legislator -- for a Barack Obama in the Illinois Senate -- can we be so sure that the skill set picked up over eight years in a state Capitol is inferior as presidential preparation to two decades in the pompous, cordoned-off environment of the U.S. Senate? I seriously doubt it."
So there.
We seriously doubt the Obama campaign is going to roll out ads anytime soon that tout Obama's time in Springfield quite like Ehrenhalt does. But his column makes for an intriguing read, nonetheless.
-- Don Frederick
Photo credit: Associated Press
One of the results that leaps out of the new L.A. Times/Bloomberg poll that gives Barack Obama a double-digit lead over John McCain is the "passion gap."
That would be the astounding difference in enthusiasm levels for the two presidential candidates (Times Washington bureau chief Doyle McManus writes here about this and other aspects of the poll).
Among Obama supporters, 81% say they are either "very" or "somewhat" enthusiastic about his candidacy (with 47% putting themselves in the "very" category).
Among McCain supporters, by contrast, only 45% characterize themselves as enthused by his candidacy (and just 13% of them are in the "very" camp). Perhaps more amazingly, a majority of the registered voters who plan to vote for McCain -- 51% -- describe themselves as "not too enthusiastic" or "not enthusiastic at all" about doing so.
These figures underscore one of the challenges facing McCain: With so many of his own supporters lukewarm about him, how can he hope to derail an opponent whose backers are much more fired up about their choice?
At this point in McCain's political career -- with his persona already deeply etched in the public consciousness -- chances are slim that he'll be transformed into a candidate who electrifies his partisans.
So, chances are much of his campaign's own efforts will be targeted at trying to cool the ardor for the new kid on the block. And McCain will be hoping that Obama contributes to this as well, through miscues and missed opportunities.
Along these lines, McCain can take heart from how voters responded when asked in the new poll which candidate had the "right experience" to be president -- he was named by 47%, Obama by 27%.
-- Don Frederick
A recent Newsweek poll, showing Barack Obama with a 15-percentage-point lead over John McCain, left many of the folks closely watching the presidential race scratching their heads.
With other polls showing a closer race, did the Newsweek survey accurately detect a somewhat delayed Obama "bounce" following the official end of Hillary Clinton's campaign? Or did the magazine get it wrong?
A just-completed L.A. Times/Bloomberg national poll may help clarify the confusion. We cannot reveal the precise figures quite yet; for the results, check LATimes.com about 5 p.m. EDT (2 p.m. PDT) today.
The survey not only asked registered voters their preferences in the head-to-head race between McCain and Obama but, in a second question, specifically included Ralph Nader and Bob Barr as choices to try to determine how their presidential candidacies might affect November's main event.
The poll also gauged voter attitudes toward Obama and McCain on a raft of issues and characteristics, including which has the right experience to be president and which has more honesty and integrity. And one of the poll's most dramatic findings concerned differing enthusiasm levels among their backers.
-- Don Frederick
Though some might have made peace with the idea that Hillary Clinton won’t be running for vice president on a ticket headed by Barack Obama, boosters of a Democratic "dream ticket" got a shot in the arm Thursday.
A Fox News Poll showed voters preferring Barack-Hillary over John McCain and Mitt Romney by 48% to 41%, or just outside the poll’s margin of error. (The pairing of Republican McCain with the former Massachusetts governor, Romney, remains, of course, just as hypothetical as the Obama-Clinton combo.)
In the Fox survey -- and here's the key for "dream ticket" fans -- narrows when he's matched mano a mano (without running mates) against McCain.
The poll shows Obama ahead in the "horse race" over McCain by 4 percentage points (45% to 41%), a lead that drops to 3% when independent Ralph Nader and Libertarian Bob Barr are thrown into the mix.
But backers of an Obama-Clinton ticket should absorb this additional tidbit from the Fox poll: 33% of voters said they would rather see the New York senator on the Supreme Court or in an Obama cabinet; 28% picked her for the VP slot.
The Fox poll also found that two out of three voters say they don’t care whether a candidate sometimes eschews a flag lapel pin, as Obama used to. And Democrats are markedly more enthusiastic about their candidate than Republicans -- 78% of Dems say they are satisfied with Obama, 54% of Republicans say the same about McCain.
(While the Fox poll queried 900 voters in all, it reached only 379 Democrats and 315 Republicans, meaning that the margins of error for the Republican and Democratic samples are considerably larger. Meaning, don't jump to conclusions.)
The poll hints at possible trouble areas for Obama: A slight plurality of registered voters say they trust McCain more. And a bare majority say they remain concerned that Obama for 20 years was a member of Rev. Jeremiah Wright's church and listened to "controversial and unpatriotic" comments before he distanced himself from the pastor.
-- James Rainey
During the 2000 presidential campaign, NBC reporter Lisa Myers sat in the living room of the Texas governor's mansion and asked the leading Republican candidate's wife, "Will you be more like Hillary Clinton or like Barbara Bush?"
And Laura Bush replied, "I think I'll be more like Laura Bush."
Her answer was dead-on for the spouse of any presid ential candidate.
They each craft their own campaign personality and find their own way through the noise, the bewildering crowds, the media landmines, the catty criticisms, the anguishing debates and unexpected audience questions, the policy innuendoes, the endless hotel rooms and late-night flights, the repetitive interviews and family strains, not least on the children back home.
They each seek to help their spouse's campaign, or at least not hurt it. But the national election ritual, now stretched over nearly two years, is a mind-numbing experience in the truest sense of the word.
Americans still don't know all that much about Cindy McCain or Michelle Obama. That will come out in dribs and drabs in coming weeks as the two parties' strategists' seek even the slightest advantage.
On "The View" Wednesday, viewers learned that Michelle, a strong public speaker though a presidential campaign rookie, is a relentless saleswoman with her eye on every opportunity to push her husband's candidacy.
A magazine cover story this weekend will reveal she has shopped at Target, as our colleague Elizabeth Snead reports over on the Dish Rag.
Michelle will probably relax some over time; most Americans seem to prefer their campaigning spouses on the softer-sell side, witness the resistance engendered by Hillary Clinton in the 1990s and to Bill Clinton's aggressive spousal touting this year, while...
Read more Poll finds Americans know Michelle Obama more, like her less than Cindy McCain »
The latest national polling in the presidential race is nothing if not consistent -- most of the recent ones, including an ABC News/Washington Post survey released today, show Barack Obama with a four- percentage-point lead over John McCain among registered voters.
That's not great news for the presumptive Democratic nominee, given all the factors seemingly weighing against the Republican Party (most obviously President Bush's in-the-tank approval ratings). But Obama should be heartened by a new poll that focused solely on Latino voters in 21 states.
The survey, conducted by Pacific Market Research and political scientists at the University of Washington, found Obama's level of support approaching what Democratic presidential candidates -- until the 2004 election -- had come to count on.
Obama swamped McCain in the survey, 60% to 23%, with 16% undecided. The poll's margin of error was plus-or-minus 3.5 percentage points.
Hillary Clinton consistently walloped Obama among Latino voters in the prolonged Democratic primary battle. That caused some in the party to wonder about Obama's ability to attract significant support from this bloc in the general election.
But the new results put him within shouting distance of the 67% of the Latino vote that, according to exit polling, Al Gore won in the 2000 election. And Obama's goal, no doubt, will be to come close to the 72% that Bill Clinton won in his 1996 reelection (or, even better, the 76% that Jimmy Carter won in 1976).
Bush raised GOP hopes that the party was making inroads with Latino voters when he captured 43% of Latino votes four years ago, compared with John Kerry's 56%, according to exit polling. But the new figures indicate that the party has not been able to sustain that support.
More about the new survey, including matchups in specific states, can be read here.
-- Don Frederick
Al Gore unquestionably has taken to heart his role as an elder statesman -- he stayed so far above the fray of the Democratic presidential race that the fray was fast becoming an afterthought when he finally bestowed his imprimatur on Barack Obama today.
As Mark Silva of the Chicago Tribune aptly put it in a blog post on the none-too-surprising endorsement, call Gore "nothing if not cautious."
 Gore joined Obama tonight at a rally in Detroit. Before that, he previewed on his website and in an e-mail his embrace of his party's presumptive presidential nominee. He also urged, for the first time, members of AlGore.com to donate to a political campaign -- as if Obama needs any help on that front.
Obama can use help in more fully binding Democrats behind his candidacy after his prolonged battle with Hillary Clinton.
A recent Gallup Poll found him drawing support from 78% of those who share his party registration; by comparison, exit polls showed John Kerry captured 86% of the Democratic vote in the 2004 presidential election.
Most analysts expect Obama's share of the Democratic vote to increase as the campaign progresses, and Gore's moves today could slightly accelerate that process. If committed Democrats agree on anything, it's that the 2000 election was stolen from Gore, and in the years since that has made him a rallying point.
As the former vice president himself wryly (and ruefully) put it tonight, "Take it from me, elections matter."
Still, if Gore sounded most of the expected notes in his speech -- blasting, on issues large and small, what he termed the "incompetence, neglect and failure" of the Bush administration -- there was one omission that may not go unnoticed in certain quarters: a direct mention of either of the Clintons.
He made an indirect reference to Hillary as he sang the praises of the year's Democratic presidential field. And he seemed to be setting up a nod to her husband ...
Read more Al Gore wraps his arms around Barack Obama »
* With a nod to the late Bo Diddley.
A new Diageo/The Hotline poll today again reinforces just how closely divided the national electorate is between John McCain and Barack Obama -- it has Obama up by 2 points -- but also has a couple of other nuggets to digest on a Friday morning.
First is the favorable/unfavorable rating. Obama tops McCain 57% to 52% in the favorable ratings, and similarly has lower unfavorable ratings, 33% to 37% for McCain. Both gaps are within the margin of error, yet suggest what we're likely to see as the campaign evolves -- efforts by the Republicans to whittle away at the gap and by Democrats to widen it.
Also, the poll found unity in at least one area among voters -- concerns about the economy, jobs and unemployment, with 31% of Democrats and Republicans both saying it should be the top priority for whoever wins in the fall. Independents? A little higher at 35% -- and those are the folks both sides need to woo.
Curiously, though, Democrats and Republicans split when asked what they thought was the most serious issue facing the country, with with 41% of Democrats saying the "economy in general," but only 27% of Republicans saying so. Second place for both was gas/fuel/oil prices, but with 21% of Republicans and 13% of Democrats. Add 'em together: 54% of Democrats said the economy and fuel prices, and 48% of Republicans.
But those crucial independents? The economy got 32% and fuel prices 21% for a combined 53%. And that's why you see both campaigns hammering away at those issues, with Obama trying to tie McCain to the Bush administration policies and McCain trying paint Obama as pushing higher taxes on people already feeling pinched.
The war in Iraq? Only 5% of Republicans listed it as the nation's most pressing issue, compared with 15% among the Democrats. But only 3% of the independents placed it highest. So as James Carville once famously said, "It's the economy, stupid." At least for right now.
-- Scott Martelle
Photo: Eric Leonard
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