The latest Reuters/Zogby poll now has McCain leading Obama by 5 percentage points, reversing Obama’s recent lead by more than that margin just a few days ago.
As I’ve said to Obama supporters and now say to McCain supporters, these polls mean little. Once the conventions are held, then they will mean more. But the only opinions that count are those that happen to be dominant on election day.
What strikes me, though, is the utter volatility of American opinion. It can careen wildly from week to week. A single faux pas or a clever zinger can seemingly sway an election. That’s a climate ripe for demagoguery and thus, potentially, tyranny.
Certainly the day to day persuasion of the electorate is what a campaign is all about. It looks like Obama is no longer inevitable and McCain has gained momentum. (By the way, note the bias in the linked article, which gives excuses for Obama and tries to refute McCain’s debating points.) I worry, though, on another level, that we have lost some of the old virtues of citizenship that took self-government more seriously.
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It’s very much a popularity contest, and what gets treated as ‘the issues’ are pretty much the day-to-day disclosures and errors that threaten to upend first one campaign, then the other.
I know blogs get a bad rap, but many are more informative than the newspapers or networks. Not the purely party blogs, but news-driven blogs. I don’t know how I’d grasp the candidates (except through built-in personal bias) without the internet.
Voters are treated more as targets of ad campaigns (and not by the campaigns themselves, but by media) than as people needing information. I don’t know if they think we can’t handle the truth, or that they’re better suited to decide what truth we need to hear and read.
For all the talk and all the time and all the swell graphics, etc., actual coverage is pretty pathetic.
I heard John Zogby and (forgot his first name) Rasmussen on the radio last night. They pointed out three things. 1. Although it is being reported a big one-time shift, McCain had been steadily gaining ground for the last month. 2. McCain is five points ahead based on poles taken before Saddleback, which they both thought would help McCain gain a bigger lead. 3. Obama is struggling with self-identified Democrats - basically he has not won over many of the Hillary folks.
My impression based on what these guys said is that this is less of a fickle change of opinion but more of a steady move in favor of McCain. Conservatives are getting used to the idea of supporting him and some of Obama’s gloss is coming off. I hear lots of comments from people that are disappointed that Obama is really not the new kind of politician they had hoped he was.
with all respect I’m trying to reconcile this post with the one on lowering the drinking age.
Self-government is more than considering your voting, it’s being responsible for your actions and being accountable for the same. And if you expect those 18 year olds to vote, maybe they should be allowed to be free to do other things, like own weapons and drink beer?
I’d tend to agree with you normally, Dr. Veith, but in this election, I think the poll and the change actually makes good sense. Even with me keeping up with the election 10 times more than the average Joe, I actually learned something NEW at the Saddleback debate. (the Cindy McCain daughter story) I think this might be a result of people, even evangelicals with the abortion question, seeing an equal and accurate view of the candidates for the first time. You can thank the Obamamania media for the over attention to Obama and the under attention to McCain.
If this were some silly gaffe that had a huge change in the polls, I would say: silly voters. But this time, a substantive event moved pollsters away from “a good speaker” and toward a candidate with solid answers and a relevant back story of which they had scarcely seen the details before.
Joe, you said:
McCain is five points ahead based on poles taken before Saddleback,
I thought McCain was five points ahead due to GEORGIANS being taken from Tbilisi by RUSSIANS before Saddleback. I mean, the Polish missile shield is kind of a big deal, but come on. The Poles? I didn’t expect it to have that big of an impact on the electorate.
(ba dum ching!)
“Once the conventions are held, then [these polls] will mean more.” Maybe. But there is a fundamental flaw in national presidential polls, which is that they necessarily assume that we elect our President by popular vote. We do not. (Imagine that every person in California tomorrow told Zogby they were voting for Obama. This would make a huge upswing for him in the national polls, yet would not make him any more or less likely to win the Presidency.)
A more revealing way to look at such polls is to break them out by state and weight them by each state’s electoral votes (Electoral-Vote.com is one such site; there are others). Best I can tell, the reason national polls do not do that is because it’s hard or confusing to people.
“Note the bias in the linked article, which gives excuses for Obama and tries to refute McCain’s debating points.” Can you point to something specific?
The Jones - “The Poles?” Very nice. Very nice, indeed.
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