Outside the Beltway

Has Obama Done Himself Any Good? (Updated)

· Wednesday, March 19, 2008 · 2 comments

As James noted yesterday I’m still waiting for the overnight tracking polls to decide whether Sen. Obama has done himself any good with his speech of yesterday. Several people e.g. Talkleft are quoting the Public Policy Polling poll which finds Hillary Clinton leading Barack Obama 56-30 in Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, the poll was taken before Obama’s speech so it doesn’t include any reactions to it. Besides, I wonder a little if the interactive voice response polling technology used by PPP doesn’t skew the results of itself. As of this moment I haven’t found any overnight tracking polls.

Most of the commentary I’ve read, as I also noted yesterday, has just been a Rorschach test. Those predisposed favorably towards Obama tended to find the speech uplifting, turning a new page in racial relationships in the United States, those predisposed unfavorably towards Obama have tended to be highly critical. It’s what moderates and independents think about Sen. Obama that is likely to make his candidacy or break it.

The best I could find in the way of polling was the Intrade Prediction market for Barack Obama, below:

Intrade prediction market for Barack Obama

Do I detect a little up-tick? There doesn’t seem to be a great deal of volume. Will the the up-tick become a trend? Will the trend be enough to reverse the harm done over the last week?

Stay tuned!

Update

The Reuters/Zogby poll released today which I’m starting to see quoted was taken March 13-14.

FILED UNDER: 2008 Election, Science & Technology, , , , ,
Dave Schuler
About Dave Schuler
Over the years Dave Schuler has worked as a martial arts instructor, a handyman, a musician, a cook, and a translator. He's owned his own company for the last thirty years and has a post-graduate degree in his field. He comes from a family of politicians, teachers, and vaudeville entertainers. All-in-all a pretty good preparation for blogging. He has contributed to OTB since November 2006 but mostly writes at his own blog, The Glittering Eye, which he started in March 2004.

Comments

  1. Triumph says:
    Wednesday, 19 March 2008 at 09:38

    Obama’s speech was disgusting. There is no place in American politics for a nuanced, contextual analysis of one of the more complex themes of the country’s historical development.

    By retreating from simplistic canards he is doing nothing but helping the evildoers destroy the country.

    Its no wonder this guy doesn’t wear an American flag pin.

  2. Hal says:
    Saturday, 22 March 2008 at 11:14

    Another poll update

    ixty-nine percent of voters who have heard or read about Obama’s speech say he did a good job addressing the issue of race relations, and 63 percent of voters following the events say they agree with Obama’s views on race relations. Seventy-one percent say he did a good job explaining his relationship with Wright.

    That despite bithead’s best efforts to the contrary. Complete poll results in pdf here

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