{"id":14957,"date":"2008-03-20T14:20:17","date_gmt":"2008-03-20T18:20:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/14957.html"},"modified":"2008-03-20T14:20:17","modified_gmt":"2008-03-20T18:20:17","slug":"its-one-daily-tracking-poll-but","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/its-one-daily-tracking-poll-but\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s one daily tracking poll, but…"},"content":{"rendered":"

This Rasmussen poll<\/a> seems to be getting quite a bit of attention, bolstered in part by a big Drudge headline about McCain’s “double digit” lead.<\/p>\n

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Thursday shows John McCain’s lead growing against both potential Democratic opponents. McCain currently leads Barack Obama 49% to 42% and Hillary Clinton 51% to 41% margin. African-American support for Clinton has collapsed, falling to 55% in the general election match-up. Obama, on the other hand, earns solid support from African-American voters but attracts only 36% of white voters in a match-up with McCain.<\/p>\n

Over the past month, McCain has gained ground in Ohio, Michigan, Colorado, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania. Both Democrats continue to lead in New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut and California.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This either a very big deal or not at all a big deal, depending entirely on one’s disposition.<\/p>\n

If you’re among the latter, you’ll note that it’s only one poll — a daily tracking poll, at that — and Rasmussen, while not bad, is still an automated system that hasn’t batted 1.000 this year. McCain enjoys a relatively comfortable lead, but that comes at a time when he’s facing very little scrutiny, and the media has decided that Jeremiah Wright is the single most important person on the planet.<\/p>\n

And if you’re among the prior, Rasmussen is reinforcing your worst fears.
\n
\nAfter all this campaigning from two very talented Democratic candidates, the Republican candidate who’s promising voters four more years of Bush\/Cheney is ahead<\/i>? In Clinton’s case, by double-digits?<\/p>\n

And if we’re willing to look beyond just the Rasmussen numbers, there’s also evidence that independents are moving to McCain<\/a> in large numbers right now?<\/p>\n

Look, it’s March. Campaigns that panic in March look pretty foolish, given that so much can and will happen.<\/p>\n

That said, there’s been considerable discussion in Democratic circles in recent weeks whether a prolonged primary would hurt the party’s chances in November. And now we’re seeing at least a few polls in which the Dems’ big leads over McCain have evaporated, and in Rasmussen’s case, it’s now McCain with the lead.<\/p>\n

Granted, there are multiple factors playing out simultaneously, but as Isaac Chotiner noted<\/a>, poll numbers like these are only going to make the Democratic establishment a lot more antsy.<\/p>\n

The Clinton campaign is probably right in assuming that the only way they can win the nomination is to destroy Obama’s electability argument with superdelegates. The obvious problem is that intense campaigning and attacks may hurt her popularity, too. But the Clintonites should be wary of Drudge headlines like “McCain now leads by double-digits” for another reason. If superdelegates begin to think that the party is blowing it’s chance at the presidency, it’s all the more likely that they will want to end this tiresome primary sooner rather than later.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

With each passing day, I’m looking forward to ending this process more and more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This Rasmussen poll seems to be getting quite a bit of attention, bolstered in part by a big Drudge headline about McCain’s “double digit” lead. The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Thursday shows John McCain’s lead growing against both potential Democratic opponents. McCain currently leads Barack Obama 49% to 42% and Hillary Clinton […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14957\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}