Like I said the other day [6], more polls are out and they continue to show McCain moving up against Obama - despite a full week of (even more) fawning media coverage during Barack's world coming out party.
Rasumssen's daily tracking [7] shows it getting tigher. They put it this way:
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that Barack Obama's Berlin bounce is gone. Obama now attracts 44% of the vote while John McCain earns 42%. When "leaners" are included, it's Obama 47% and McCain 46%. Compared to a week ago, Obama has gained a single percentage point.
But it gets even better. The results of the latest Gallup poll [8], as reported by Newsmax [9]:
A surprising poll released Monday confirms Sen. Barack Obama's worst nightmare: he actually lost ground to Sen. John McCain after a global trip meant to buck up his sagging credentials in foreign and military policy.
The USA Today/Gallup poll has McCain leading Obama by four points, 49 percent to Obama's 45 percent, among likely voters.
Just last month, the same poll had McCain trailing by six points to the neophyte U.S. senator.
Among registered voters, McCain was just three points behind Obama -- a statistical dead heat.
Yes, you read that right. McCain leading. The guys over at MSNBC must be pulling their hair out. ("How far in the tank [10] do we have to go to help this guy!?!") USA Today [11] points out that a previous poll among "likely voters" had McCain down 50% to 44%.
What's going on?
So what intervened? What's happened between the days when Obama had a large lead and now? Well, they can't blame Rev. Wright. Can't blame upset Hillary supporters who've supposedly been getting on the bandwagon in a show of unity. So what's left. Two things: 1) energy prices and McCain and the GOP's (still weak) effort to get out front and 2) Barry's World Tour...and what looks like the backlash against it.
Also, keep in mind that "likely" voters are, pretty much by definition, more tuned in to what's going on. Meaning it's the people who are paying attention that have begun to move away from Obama the fastest.
Gallup's own survey [12] shows people picking energy prices by far as the biggest financial issue they face. And, again from Gallup, most Americans DO NOT have a favorable opinion of Barry's recent trip:
Thirty-five percent had a positive opinion, while 26% had a negative opinion, with the rest -- more than a third -- saying they didn't know enough about the trip to be able to say.
Not surprisingly, there were highly partisan reactions to the trip. Notably, Democrats are slightly less likely than Republicans to have an opinion on the trip at all. ...
Then this:
The heavy coverage of the trip may have fueled speculation (or reinforced pre-existing attitudes) about news media bias in Obama's favor. A separate set of questions in the weekend poll asked Americans about their views of the news media's coverage of the two major-party candidates. Americans are more than twice as likely to say media coverage of Obama is unfairly positive as to say it is unfairly negative. For McCain, the opposite is true, with many more seeing coverage of him as unfairly negative than as unfairly positive.
Well, well, well. You don't say. Like I've said before [6], I think the backlash thing is real...and Barry's peaked too soon. Just like with anything else, (TV shows, fashion fads, and other personalities), people can only take so much...even if they were inclined to like the "product". And it seems this phenomenon happens even quicker in today's world, given that there are an ever increasing number of outlets from which we get bombarded.
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