Saturday, September 13, 2008

McCain's Bounce Continues to Fade....

Gallup shows the campaign bounce continuing to fade - from 5 points on Monday to 2 today.

Rasmussen shows McCain still with a 3 point lead amongst likely voters.

What does this mean? It means we're now on the downward curve of the McCain bounce. Keep in mind that Gallup is a leading indicator poll (more reactive to daily trends) and Rasmussen is a lagging indicator poll (doesn't move until it's reflected an actual overall shift). What the two polls tell us together is that the McCain bounce was real last week, putting him into a temporary leading position, but just like Obama's bounce, it will be just that: a temporary bounce that will fade. But because McCain had his convention immediately after Obama's and there's no real voter-changing events till the debates, his bounce will take a lot longer to fade than Obama's did. But that's simply the statistical scenario of two conventions immediately after each other.

The lesson: don't freak out, Democrats. The momentum is turning back to Democrats and Obama is finally honing his message and being forceful without resorting to slime tactics. He's also being smarter about working news events like Ike into resonant sound bites, like "quiet storms." Maybe he's got a new writer on the team? But he's adjusting, events like Ike and scandals in Washington and Alaska don't help Republicans, and McCain has nothing else up his sleave but Palin, pigs, and slime.

Also, this interesting fact: a majority of voters, particularly white women, like Palin, but a larger majority don't know her positions on abortion or creationism. That means they're not familiar with the Palin scandals. Once they become more familiar, some of that popularity will wear off.

In all likelihood, the election will return to a statistical tie by the time of the first debate in two weeks. That still may not sound good but a statistical tie at the national level is pobably good news for Obama electorally.

See more recent updates.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Best news I have heard all day.