Comments on: Poll: Bush a Liability for McCain

By: PoliBlog (TM): A Rough Draft of my Thoughts » New Poll Finds: I Like Coffee

PoliBlog (TM): A Rough Draft of my Thoughts » New Poll Finds: I Like Coffee — Thu, 01 May 2008 17:10:48 +0000

[...] James Joyner Sphere: Related Content Previous Posts The Coffee-Powered [...]

By: Bithead

Bithead — Thu, 01 May 2008 16:44:52 +0000

Yeah, I mean, why else would they be running polls on John McCain in the middle of an election year?

Not quite that simple, Mike. he's not exactly been in the forefront of the news of late and won't until these other issues are squared. The poll results take on a tone of "stop fighting each other, when you can be attacking Bush".

By: Anderson

Anderson — Thu, 01 May 2008 16:39:06 +0000

32 percent have a major problem with the Illinois senator’s past associations with Wright and the 1960s radical William Ayers

And how many of those people were remotely likely to vote Democratic in the first place?

32% is about where the GOP's base is these days.

By: yetanotherjohn

yetanotherjohn — Thu, 01 May 2008 16:03:25 +0000

As a rule of thumb, I assume that 1/3 will have a problem with anything a republican or democrat says/does. The represents the hard core partisans on either side. I agree that this would be a lot more useful and interesting if we had the cross tabs (and the sample was large enough to make the cross-tabs viable) so we can see if this is just partisans who aren't going to vote for the other guy anyway, persuadable independents or is eroding the base.

BTW SDM, As Joyner points out, only the "major/serious" concerns are talked about because the moderates flatten out the results. So adding moderate to get your number is comparing apples to oranges.

By: Michael

Michael — Thu, 01 May 2008 15:16:11 +0000

Gee, the timing here seems interesting. Here we have Obama in the wrost trouble he's been in since the chase for the WH began, and suddenly we have this little diversion come along.

Yeah, I mean, why else would they be running polls on John McCain in the middle of an election year?

By: Bithead

Bithead — Thu, 01 May 2008 14:27:40 +0000

Gee, the timing here seems interesting. Here we have Obama in the wrost trouble he's been in since the chase for the WH began, and suddenly we have this little diversion come along.

By: SDM

SDM — Thu, 01 May 2008 14:18:00 +0000

Most interesting result is that almost 60% of those polls think it's a major or moderate concern that John McCain is a flip-flopper. In the face of a very well-calculated media strategy by McCain to be the "straight talker," that can't be a fun stat for his team to see. That's significantly more than are concerned about Wright. From the poll: "It is hard to tell where John McCain stands on the issues because he changes his positions on things like making the recent federal tax cuts permanent and opposing new gun control laws to improve his chances of being elected"...31% major concern, 28% moderate concern.