Obama at Low Point in Polls, Yet Still Ahead
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on May 30th, 2008 4:32 am by HL
Obama at Low Point in Polls, Yet Still Ahead
Josh Orton at MyDD looks at the Pew Poll — which has Obama up 47-44 over McCain — and sees Bush being a major albatross for McCain.
Matt Stoller at Open Left says Orton is “missing the picture,” because Obama’s numbers came down three points thanks to “women, specifically, white women, who are unhappy and switching over to, mostly, undecided .. white women between the ages of 30-64, with a specific heavy loss among women between the ages of 50-64. In other words, this is Clinton’s bread and butter.”
But that’s 1) an understandable development of the protracted primary and 2) most likely a temporary development that won’t leave lasting damage to Obama’s prospects.
McCain has nothing to offer on women’s issues. Nothing to offer on reproductive freedom, equal pay, child care, or Social Security (very much a women’s issue as longer living women are more reliant on the benefits.)
Further, Marc Ambinder reports: “It’s an open secret in Republican and Democratic circles that less ideological Republican women and independent women are openly disdainful of John McCain in focus groups; they find him angry; they don’t believe that he’s equipped with the proper temperament to do the job.”
These voters shouldn’t be taken for granted and presumed to be eventual Obama voters. But after a little time for healing, and with more prominent women leading the charge, it’s likely that these women will return to the fold.
This is more evidence that Obama is at his low-point in the polls, yet he remains ahead.