Tuesday, June 17th, 2008

Does McCain Have A Chance?

Sure, it’s only June. We’re only halfway through the 3rd quarter. But things don’t look good for the senator from Arizona.

Obama is consolidating. He hired Clinton’s former campaign chief and got Al Gore to endorse him yesterday. McCain is out on the stump fighting off comparisons to George W. Bush.

The latest poll shows Obama winning the election 49% to 45%.

Previous polls had Obama leading McCain amongst all the groups Hillary Clinton warned he might be soft in–women, Hispanics, Catholics, working-class voters. This latest poll confirms some of those numbers.

Obama leads among men by 7 points and women by 6. True, he trails McCain among whites overall by 12 points, but Kerry lost by 25 and Gore lost by 24.

Historians–people who get paid to think about this stuff for a living–don’t rate McCain’s chances at all. Look at who he gets compared to–Adlai Stevenson in 1952, Hubert Humphrey in 1968, Jimmy Carter in 1980, folks who just got murked at the polls.

McCain is ahead 20 points among married white women, and splits the independents. But independents are clearly against the war, and feminists are solidly supporting Obama. Obama’s “50-state strategy” is aimed at winning over folks on the fence with old-school community organizing-style person-to-person appeals in their neighborhoods.

Meanwhile, the biggest worry for McCain is that he can’t seem to get folks excited about his candidacy. That’s a long-term problem: he won’t be able to raise the money he needs or develop a sufficient ground operation if he can’t rally his base. On the other hand, dismissed Republican candidate Ron Paul’s supporters are preparing a huge rally in Minneapolis the week that the GOP formally nominates McCain there.

Well, that should be fun.

posted by Jeff Chang @ 7:04 am | 0 Comments

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