What the National Polls are Saying
February 27, 2008
The latest election coverage is highlighting that Senator Barack Obama has pulled ahead of Senator Hillary Clinton in the race for the Democratic nomination for President, not just in the delegate count, but in national polls. The polls also show how each of the leading Democratic candidates match up against Republican front-runner Senator John McCain.
A Bloomberg/LA Times poll showed Obama leading Clinton 48% to 42% (the first time he has led in the Bloomberg/LA Times national poll). The same poll shows Obama trailing McCain by 2 points, which is within the margin of error and qualifies as a statistical dead-heat. When matched up against Hillary Clinton, McCain’s lead widens to 6 points. The tipping point appears to be among independent voters, among whom Clinton has only a 48% favorable rating, “Obama has a 63 percent favorable rating… while McCain has a 65 percent positive rating.”
CNN has used three national polls to come up with a “poll of polls.” Using AP-IPSOS, USA Today/Gallup, and CBS/New York Times, they give Obama an even stronger lead over Clinton than the Bloomberg/LA Times poll – 50% to 40%. They also gave Obama the lead over McCain – 49% to 42%. They put McCain in a tie with Clinton at 46% each. Again, though, the answer to why Obama does better than Clinton against McCain comes down to one thing: independents. CNN quoted Obama as saying, “It’s a choice between going into the general election with Republicans and independents already united against us, or running with a campaign that has already united Americans of all parties around the agenda for change. Now that’s the choice.”
The implication in the case of both sets of polls is not merely that independents like Obama, but that they specifically do not like Clinton. Because of this, the predominant idea is that “the belief that Obama is more electable is taking hold.”
