July 24, 2008
McCain Makes Gains In Four Key States
Washingtonpost.com Poll: McCain Leads In Colo.; Obama Has Small Leads In Mich., Minn., Big Lead In Wis.
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Play CBS Video Video GOP 'Veepstakes' Rumors that Sen. John McCain will soon announce his choice for VP spur a review of likely candidates. Harry Smith talks to Mike Crowley, senior editor of The New Republic magazine.
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Video Obama Brings Tour To Berlin Tens of thousands are expected for Sen. Barack Obama's address at Berlin's Victory Column. Mark Phillips reports.
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Video Eye To Eye: McCain On Mideast John McCain talks about his plans for Iraq and Afghanistan and sharply criticizes Barack Obama's understanding of the war on the terror. McCain also addresses criticism of favoritism in the media.
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News Tools Poll Database Search for results from the latest CBS News national polls on the president, the campaign and more.
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Podcast Poll Positions Listen to CBS News director of surveys Kathy Frankovic dissect the data to see what's driving public opinion.
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Republican John McCain has quickly closed the gap between himself and Democratic rival Sen. Barack Obama in several key battleground states even as the Arizona senator struggles to break through the wall-to-wall coverage of Obama's trip to Europe and the Middle East this week.
McCain and Obama are in a statistical dead heat in Colorado, Michigan and Minnesota while the Illinois senator has a more comfortable double-digit edge in Wisconsin, according to polling conducted by Quinnipiac University for washingtonpost.com and the Wall Street Journal during the past week. Only in Colorado, however, does McCain hold a greater percentage of the vote share than Obama.
The economy is still the dominant concern of voters in each state. Nearly six in ten respondents in Michigan, a state crippled by the dire problems of the auto industry, cited the economy as the single most important issue in their decision this fall. The war in Iraq ranked second in terms of voter priorities but was named by less than one in five respondents in each state. Potential hot button issues such as terrorism and illegal immigration were cited by fewer than 10 percent of voters in ranking their top priorities.
The surveys are part of a four-month long effort to measure voter sentiment in key battleground states that could determine the outcome of the race. The path to the presidency runs through a handful of battleground states, as both Obama and McCain seek the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House. Thus, the four states surveyed in this project provide a snapshot of where things stand less than four months before Election Day.
The first in the series of polls, conducted in the four states in mid-June, showed Obama comfortably ahead of McCain in Wisconsin and Minnesota while the races in Michigan and Colorado were closer although Obama still held the lead. The latest polling, showing a much tighter race, was conducted July 14 to 22, during Obama's high-profile trip to the Middle East.
National polling suggests Obama retains a steady but statistically significant edge. In the most recent Washington Post/ABC News survey, Obama held a 50 percent to 42 margin over McCain; in the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, released last night, Obama leads 47 percent to 41.
While both campaigns are heavily engaged on television in most of these states, it's not immediately clear from the data what accounted for McCain's rapid rise -- particularly in Minnesota and Colorado.
One possible reason is the campaign's focus over the last month on the war in Iraq and national security concerns more broadly. McCain's campaign has hammered home the idea that Obama was mistaken in his opposition to the surge of U.S. troops last year and is wrong now about his proposed 16-month timetable for withdrawing troops.
Voters in all four states seem to agree. Asked whether they would prefer a "fixed date" for withdrawal or to "keep troops in Iraq until the situation is more stable," majorities in all four states preferred the latter option despite the fact that similar majorities in each state say that America was wrong to go to war in Iraq.Poll Database
Search recent CBS News campaign polls.
Those results suggest that while Obama's initial opposition to the war plays well with voters, his plan to remove troops from the country within 16 months of taking office as president is less well received. Obama's plan did, however, receive a major boost earlier this week when Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said his government would like U.S Forces to be out of the country by 2010.
Other internal numbers in the battleground polls are less rosy for McCain. Nearly one-quarter of voters in each of the four states said McCain's age -- he will be 72 at the time of the election -- makes them less likely to vote for him. Numbers like that may put more pressure on McCain to pick someone considerably younger than him -- Gov. Tim Pawlenty (Minn.) or Sen. John Thune (S.D.) -- as his vice presidential running mate.
The national political environment -- as reflected in these four statewide polls -- also seems to suggest major hurdles for McCain in the fall. President George W. Bush remains a decidedly unpopular figure to the general public with no more than 31 percent in any of the four states approving of the job he is doing. The numbers are even more daunting among self-identified independents who typically make up the swing vote in a presidential election. In Colorado, where independents have traditionally leaned toward Republicans, seven in ten unaffiliated voters expressed disapproval with the job Bush is doing. Those numbers are nearly identical in each of the other three states.
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The polls also reveal widespread pessimism about the future of the country -- never a good sign for the candidate running under the party banner of the incumbent. In Minnesota, just one in five voters called themselves very or somewhat satisfied with "the way things are going in the nation today" while a whopping 77 percent pronounced themselves dissatisfied. The outlook was even worse in the other three states, with dissatisfied voters at 78 percent in Colorado, 81 percent in Wisconsin, and 84 percent in Michigan.
However, independents generally were far more evenly divided between Obama and McCain than in last month's Quinnipiac/washingtonpost.com/Wall Street Journal surveys.
A month ago, Obama led McCain among Independents by anywhere from 21 points (Minnesota) to eight points (Michigan). In the most recent set of data, McCain actually outperforms Obama by three points among independents in Michigan while losing that crucial voting bloc far more narrowly in Colorado (Obama +8), Minnesota (Obama +8) and Wisconsin (Obama +9).
Two of the states in the battleground surveys -- Minnesota and Colorado -- are also playing host to high profile Senate races. In each, the news is good for Republicans.
In Minnesota, Sen. Norm Coleman has built a 53 percent to 38 percent edge over entertainer Al Franken -- thanks in no small part to a series of gaffes by the former "Saturday Night Live" star. In Colorado, former Rep. Bob Schaffer (R) has pulled into a dead heat with Rep. Mark Udall (D), an affirmation of Republicans' insistence that the contest will be among the closest in the country.
By Chris Cillizza
© 2008 The Washington Post Company
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Best-selling author Mitch Albom on his first nonfiction work since "Tuesdays with Morrie."
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See all 74 CommentsHis liberal supporters must be proud of it too.
%u2022 After vowing to eschew private fundraising and take public financing, he has now refused public money.
%u2022 Once he threatened to filibuster a bill to protect telephone companies from liability for their cooperation with national security wiretaps; now he has voted for the legislation.
%u2022 Turning his back on a lifetime of support for gun control, he now recognizes a Second Amendment right to bear arms in the wake of the Supreme Court decision.
%u2022 Formerly, he told the Israeli lobby that he favored an undivided Jerusalem. Now he says he didn''''t mean it.
%u2022 From a 100 percent pro-choice position, he now has migrated to expressing doubts about allowing partial-birth abortions.
%u2022 For the first time, he now speaks highly of using church-based institutions to deliver public services to the poor.
%u2022 Having based his entire campaign on withdrawal from Iraq, he now pledges to consult with the military first.
%u2022 During the primary, he backed merit pay for teachers -- but before the union a few weeks ago, he opposed it.
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Dont Forget the Media has not been reporting Obama gaffs.
THANK YOU for stating the facts and taking the time to type it. Barack''s supporters need to see the fact''s, unfortunately many don''t care seeing through their rose-colored glasses.
%u2022 After vowing to eschew private fundraising and take public financing, he has now refused public money.
%u2022 Once he threatened to filibuster a bill to protect telephone companies from liability for their cooperation with national security wiretaps; now he has voted for the legislation.
%u2022 Turning his back on a lifetime of support for gun control, he now recognizes a Second Amendment right to bear arms in the wake of the Supreme Court decision.
%u2022 Formerly, he told the Israeli lobby that he favored an undivided Jerusalem. Now he says he didn''t mean it.
%u2022 From a 100 percent pro-choice position, he now has migrated to expressing doubts about allowing partial-birth abortions.
%u2022 For the first time, he now speaks highly of using church-based institutions to deliver public services to the poor.
%u2022 Having based his entire campaign on withdrawal from Iraq, he now pledges to consult with the military first.
%u2022 During the primary, he backed merit pay for teachers -- but before the union a few weeks ago, he opposed it.
%u2022 After specifically saying in the primaries that he disagreed with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton''s (D-N.Y.) proposal to impose Social Security taxes on income over $200,000 and wanted to tax all income, he has now adopted the Clinton position.
Posted by ProMacLaura
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You seem to be missing a very important point!
He''s NOT running on prior years moderate standing, anymore!
He flip-flopped and adopted a lot of Bush''s inept, incorrect positions and as a result LOST a lot of independent voters who previously supported him!
Can you say, a real big ''OOPS''!!
Yeah, right! I recognize a propaganda piece when I see it, and this is it! More from that rightwing controlled media!
With the news that he is actually tied with Obama in some states, McCain is puzzled how this can happen given all the supposed publicity he hasn''t gotten lately. He dismisses rumors that "swift boaters" have been handing out lollipops to anyone who says they will vote for McCain and grabbing people walking by his fundraisers, forcing them to attend.
Thinking that maybe his recently-fired "top" economic advisor, "Dr. Phil" Gramm, was right after all, and that most average Americans are "delusional" (after all, they voted TWICE for the Great Emperor Bush II, didn''t they?), "Bagdad John" has embarked on a campaign to find more of these "mentally recessed" people and bring them over to his side of the fence.
McCain intends on taking with him that "expert" on "mental problems", "Dr." Micheal Savage, to advise him on who is really mental out there and who is "faking it"!
SIG HEIL, BUSH!!!!
sig heil, ABSOLUTELY MORE OF THE SAME, McCain!!!!
Posted by ProMacLaura
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Nope, he drank deep from the kool-aid bottle, just like George Tenet. And he''s still drinkin'' from it and telling the rest of us to drink from it, too.
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Posted by clovisbuford at 07:26 PM : Jul 24, 2008
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Exactly. You hear this kind of rhetoric from the Republicans because they are scared to death, they have a candidate that has no new ideas, and is more likely to continue Bush''s disasterous ideas, so they just babble on about nothing.
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Mr. McCain, how would you handle the health care crisis in America?
McCain: The surge...the surge..
Mr. McCain, how would you handle the banking crisis in the US?
McCain: The surge...the surge..
Mr. McCain, how you you promote better math and science in our education system?
McCain: The surge....the surge....
Posted by alohaone1 at 03:40 PM : Jul 24, 2008
+ report abuse
I recall Mccains association with the Keating 5 and the savings and loan scandal, his mentor the reverend Hagee,(who calls the catholic church "the great ***". Phil Gramm his campaign co chair and financial whiz who wrote much of the legislation responsible for the Enron scandal and the subprime melt down and then had the audacity to call average americans whiners over the current financial straits this great country is in ,some of which Mr.Gramm bears direct responsibility for.
I remember speeches performed by Barack Obama that aknowledged the stories and explained his reasoning. So that''s not made up. Thank you FOX for informing us about revelent issues about his character and shady friends in Chicago. If FOX handn''t done this we all know *** well liberal bias would have hid it. Besides we didn''t have to do too much. Hillary''s team did the work. Since he can''t run his platform on experience and relies on his value system as to how we''re to grade him then your *** right, we get to ask questions too.
Posted by noloyalisti at 05:28 PM : Jul 24, 2008
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In fact, the GOP people are so ignorant they don''t even know Obama''s name, his religion or his policies. Just look at Faux News and Limpballs. They constantly show us in public their lack of any brains or knowledge. How else could they support a crazy old war-monger?
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