Once news outlets put snippets from Jeremiah Wright’s sermons in heavy rotation, Barack Obama had a political problem, and he saw his poll numbers slip fairly quickly. His speech in Philadelphia this week intended to allow the senator to explain his perspective in depth and detail, and ideally, explain to the country why this is not the political controversy the media made it out to be.
The speech, which I thought was both brilliant and poignant, was well received, and in some circles, joined the ranks of some of the most important campaign speeches delivered in the modern political era. But none of that would matter if Americans a) didn’t see the speech; or b) saw it and found it unpersuasive.
It’s still pretty new, and too soon to get a sense of the broader trends, but it appears that Obama was largely successful in his goals.
A national poll released Friday showed that voters who had heard or read about Senator Barack Obama’s speech this week on race relations and on his relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. broadly approved of it.
Seven in 10 said Mr. Obama, Democrat of Illinois, did a good job talking about race relations, and as many said he did a good job explaining his relationship with Mr. Wright, according to the CBS News poll.
More than 6 in 10 said they mostly agreed with what he said about race relations in the United States, including a broad majority of Democrats and independents. Fewer Republicans — 4 in 10 — agreed with the message.
Just as importantly, the same poll found that the entire flap was unlikely to change the broader campaign dynamics. The results showed that 70% of respondents said the controversy will make no difference in their vote. The remaining 30% were split evenly between those who said the flap makes them less likely to back Obama and those who said it makes them more likely to support him.
All of this is good news for the Obama campaign, but there were some warning signs, too.
This was the most discouraging result for the campaign:
When registered voters were asked if Obama would unite the country, however, 52 percent said yes – down from 67 percent last month.
It’s good that this number is still above 50% for Obama, but it shows that the Wright story has obviously taken a toll.
I’d just add that Obama still trails in the Gallup tracking poll, but the speech seems to have helped.
Hillary Clinton’s recent lead over Barack Obama in national Democratic nomination preferences has dwindled to the point that the two are now nearly tied, with Clinton at 47% and Obama at 45% in March 18-20 Gallup Poll Daily tracking.
Clinton moved 7 percentage points ahead of Obama in Gallup’s March 19 report and sustained a significant 5-point lead on March 20. Her gains were coincident with the controversy over Obama’s former pastor and “spiritual mentor,” Rev. Jeremiah Wright. However, the surge in Democrats’ preference for Clinton that Gallup detected earlier in the week has started to move out of the three-day rolling average, and the race is back to a near tie. It is possible that Obama’s aggressive efforts to diffuse the Wright story, including a major speech about race on March 18, have been effective.
I suspect Obama’s detractors had hoped the Wright controversy would derail the campaign altogether. That clearly hasn’t happened.