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Sen. McCain also has the lowest unfavorables on the remaining three candidates:
McCain gets an extraordinarily high 52% favorable from Democrats and independents who lean Democratic, while Obama gets a 39% favorable rating from Republicans and Republican leaners. Clinton , on the other hand, receives only a 20% favorable rating from Republicans and Republican leaners.
What about favorability among the candidate’s respective parties? Gallup shows Sen. McCain with higher favorability among Republicans (87%) than either Sen. Obama (80%) or Sen. Clinton (79%) has with Democrats. So much for the enthusiasm gap.
March 18th, 2008 at 10:15 am
This is the good news out of the poll, which is indeed good news.
The bad news, though, is that even with these numbers, McCain still loses to Obama by 2 and to Clinton by 5. How can this be?
The problem is people are practically just as favorably disposed toward Obama as they are to McCain. For comparison, at this point in the 2004 election season, John Kerry held a 28% favorability rating (compared to Obama’s 62%) – and that’s no exaggeration. In fact, the highest favorability rating Kerry ever garnered during the campaign was somewhere around 41-46%, depending on which pollster you read at the time.
Obviously, when you have three candidates all over 50%, you’ve got a relatively large sub-segment of the population that is okay with any of them. Even more so if it’s a McCain-Obama matchup.
I’m not saying this to disparage McCain at all – I am glad his favorables are this high and it gives us a great position of strength to campaign from. I’m just saying we’ve still got a hard slog ahead of us.
March 18th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
How are these favorables so different from the Rasmussen numbers?
March 18th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
McCain’s a lib. No real choice this cycle. Kill me now.