Hey kids, time for a new poll!
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I heard from a regular Undip reader this morning that John McCain continues to run ads in Iowa, and judging by what the reader is seeing, the McCain ads outnumber the Obama ads by a margin of about 2 to 1. The reader also said that he’s seeing about three negative McCain ads for every positive one.
By all accounts, McCain is down by double digits in Iowa and has been for at least a month. It probably is more “lost” to him than Michigan was when he pulled out. So what is he doing? Does he have internal numbers that contrast what the national polls are saying. Does he think that there’s a Bradley effect in Iowa? Or has his campaign just stopped trying to allocate resources according to reality?
Worse yet, is his campaign actually polling on the Bradley effect? You would think that that would have leaked by now, but maybe not. And it’s not stopping anytime soon — McCain is scheduled to go back to Iowa on Saturday.
This campaign gets uglier and weirder by the day.
UPDATE: Both Chris Orr at TNR and Dan Balz in The Washington Post beat me to this today (and do a better job of reportin reporting). Here’s Orr, quoting Balz:
The last time John McCain visited Iowa, all he got out of it was an embarrassing video of his testy meeting with the editorial board of the Des Moines Register and a column by former strategist Mike Murphy that derided the “stunning lack of competence in the McCain operation” and asked “Why put McCain in the wrong state, at the wrong place?”
But give McCain points for obstinance, if nothing else. As Jonathan Martin points out, he’s headed back to Iowa for a rally in Davenport on Saturday. Why? Dan Balz reports:
Asked why, if he has given up on Michigan, McCain has not given up on Iowa, a state that looks strong for Obama in public polls, [McCain Political Director Mike] DuHaime said because the campaign’s polling has Obama’s lead in the low single digits.
Hmm. There hasn’t been a ton of recent polling in Iowa, presumably because no one sees much point: Pollster.com lists it as “strong” Obama, RCP says “solid” Obama, and FiveThirtyEight gives Obama a 96 percent chance of winning there. Of the last ten polls listed on Pollster.com, only one has had the race closer than 7 points (the inaugural “Big Ten” poll, which was conducted in mid-September) and a majority have Obama’s lead in double digits. So either this visit is some kind of misplaced confidence game on McCain’s part, or his polls are, frankly, nuts.
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Vote early, vote often, vote like the future of American Idol depends on it.
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I probably should not speak with such certitude, but Nate Silver over at 538 had a post this weekend that makes a pretty compelling case that going negative makes it nearly impossible for McCain-Palin to win:
[T]he fact that McCain is resorting to these sorts of attacks are an indication of just how much his brand has been damaged. They certainly aren’t likely to help him to repair it.
The reason, as Silver notes, is that negative attacks usually work only when the candidate making the attack has a reservoir of positive feeling — or, to put it in statistical terms, a strong net favorability rating. For those, like me, who are not statistics geeks, what this means is that a significantly larger number of people think positively of you than who think negatively of you.
In that context, take a look at the graph that Silver put together:
As the graph above shows, McCain’s previous efforts to damage Obama — the so-called “celebrity” campaign of late July and early August and the sex-ed/lipstick campaigns of Septemver — did cause Obama’s favorability rating to decline — but it also led to a similar, albeit less steep drop in McCain’s as well. That demonstrates pretty clearly the risks involved in McCain’s current approach.
Over the past week, Obama’s net favorability rating has surged while McCain’s has crashed and burned. To make matters worse, the drop in McCain’s numbers is a product not of negative advertising by the Obama campaign, but rather McCain’s own actions:
All of this has created a dilemma for McCain. Silver:
[W]ith the exception of the past couple of weeks, McCain’s and Obama’s ratings have been fairly strongly correlated, tending to rise and fall together. This is not to say that negative campaigning doesn’t work — it sometimes does — but it works at diminished efficiency, because you may be giving back 50 cents on the dollar by harming your own approval scores.
Negative campaigns work best when the candidate making the attack is leading in net favorability, or at the very least has a significant balance of positive favorability from which he can “withdraw.” In addition, the most successful negative campaigns in recent years have come from the candidate already ahead in the polls.
So McCain faces a number of significant disadvantages here: his net favorability rating is already cratering (as is, for that matter, Sarah Palin’s); he is behind; and people don’t want to hear about character, they want to hear who has the better economic plan. Or to put it another way, McCain can throw turds at Obama, but it won’t help him if the electorate continues to regard him as the (angry and bitter) pig, lipstick or no.
I encourage you to read Silver’s entire piece.
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This poll from Gallup came out before the vote this afternoon but I still find it worth passing on:
The public isn’t very happy with anyone at the moment, with only Obama having more approve than disapprove. What I find particularly striking is the fact that McCain is blamed more than Democrats in Congress and lonly slightly less than Republicans. Given that fact, does he really think that his current strategy is going to work, especially given his posturing this morning about having made the bailout happen?
Then again, this is the guy who thought both Sarah Palin and suspending his campaign would be winners.
As my dad said to me six months ago, we don’t need experience, we need judgment.
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The most important numbers in the race may be the spread between the four candidates favorability and unfavorability ratings. Here’s the latest data:
Andrew Sullivan and others have focused on the fact that Sarah Palin has moved from +17 to -10 in less than three weeks. What I find more striking is that McCain has dropped from +12 to+1 in that same period, and Obama has gone from +15 to +27.
If these trendlines continue, Obama will soon have a double-digit lead in the polls.
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Let’s keep it simple, shall we?
Vote early, vote often.
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That’s Bush’s approval rating in the new American Research Group poll, down from 30 percent a month ago.
Nineteen percent.
Wow.
Nineteen percent of the American people still think he’s doing a good job?
I’m amazed.
Of course, 0 percent think the economy is going in the wrong direction. That sounds about right.
Bush still has about four months to go — he still could get to that magic number as well.
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Obama is back on top (ahem). Just, I would like to add, like I predicted.
Every time I put this poll up, people tell me that national tracking polls don’t matter, that only state polls matter.
On one level, you’re correct. Since we still have that archaic puddle of poo known as the electoral college, state polls continue to matter more. And given the skillful analysis provided by 538.com, I don’t bother posting state results (though I may, in the future, make an exception for Michigan and Florida, the two states I spent my childhood in).
So why do I bother? Because the Gallup poll has a history of predicting the state polls. It is about three days ahead. That’s why the state polls remain in the McCain column — but also why they already are showing movement towards Obama.
In three days, we’ll know whether I’m right.
And on November 1, you might just be able to predict who wins.
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Here’s the latest Gallup daily tracking poll:
If you are a regular poll-watcher, you can skip to the last paragraph. But if you aren’t regularly watching them, the following might give you some useful background as to how this poll works.
Gallup calls this a daily tracking poll, but in fact, each day is a rolling average of the three most recent days. So today’s results are the three-day average of Wednesday’s Thursday’s and Friday’s poll numbers.
So think about this for a minute. This past Monday and Tuesday, a few days after the Republican National Convention. McCain was ahead 49-44. Since then, his margin has eroded:
That means that the big bounce numbers after the convention are no longer part of the three-day average, and every day that passes means one less day in the average that reflects part of the bounce. We’re now down to a two-point difference, which is statistically insignificant, and by tomorrow it could be one point or even tied.
McCain is in the middle of a pretty lousy news cycle right now: Palin’s interview with Charlie Gibson didn’t go that well: the lies that both McCain and Palin have been peddling are starting to unravel, the pig-lipstick ploy backfired, the sex ed ad made McCain look really bad, and to ad insult to injury, McCain got hammered on The View, of all places.
After several tough weeks, it looks like the Obama campaign — and the candidate himself — have started to regain its focus, both its own messaging and its targeted attacks on McCain-Palin.
The number to watch is the level of McCain’s support — the margin between the two candidates is much less significant. If it continues to erode over the next few days, it could be a sign of serious problems. Unless his campaign has some heretofore unheard dirt on Obama, or there’s some sort of October surprise, they really don’t have much left in the quiver. The excitement around Palin (beyond the base) is starting to fade, and many folks are beginning to question McCain’s strategy, and even more troubling for him, his integrity. In a matter of about 72 hours we’ve gone from Democratic panic to Republican floundering.
There’s nothing saying that momentum can’t change again, but every day that McCain finds himself on the defensive, it’g going to be harder for him to change the campaign narrative.
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This is not unexpected.
This is about where we should be at this point — in the middle of the convention (and Palin) bounce. McCain may continue to gain for the next two days, but after that, we can expect things to level off again.
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Gallup’s daily tracking poll from today yesterday, which appears to have been lost in the coverage of Gustav and Sarah Palin:
Note that this includes two days of interviews after Obama’s speech and one day after McCain’s choice of Palin. So the “Palin bump” appears to have been one point.
I’ll have a new poll up sometime in the next few days, so this is your last chance to staple-gun your toenails to your forehead:
RSS subscribers, go here and look for the poll in the left-hand column.
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A little cupcake for you while you’re getting ready for tonight’s festivities. Here are today’s Gallup numbers, which do not include reaction to last night’s speeches.
Yowza, boys and girls, we have a new poll! Please be sure to vote:
If you’re using an RSS reader, you’re going to need to go to the Undip home page to vote. You can find the poll in the left-hand column.
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Sorry, I’m pretty late in getting this to you. Just now getting caught up from today’s consulting-palooza. Anyway, here’s today’s Gallup daily tracker:
Not clear whether this is the narrowing I warned of or statistically insignificant.
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I continue to be fascinated by this. According to Gallup, Obama got almost no bounce from Iraq and Afghanistan, but does seem to be enjoying a not-insignificant bump from Berlin.
Here are Gallup’s own headlines from the last four days:
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We’re experimenting with conducting a weekly survey here at Undip.
I would appreciate it if you could take a moment to vote in the current poll, which concerns what John McCain should do on Iraq.
There are two ways you can vote. Read the rest of this entry »
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