The Candidates
Rasmussen Missouri General Election Poll, conducted June 3rd, 2008
- Barack Obama 43%
- John McCain 42%
This telephone survey of 500 Likely Voters was conducted by Rasmussen Reports on June 3, 2008. The margin of sampling error for the survey is +/- 4 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.
Inside the numbers:
The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in Missouri shows that Barack Obama and John McCain are essentially even if the race for the Show-Me State’s Electoral College votes. Obama currently attracts 43% of the vote while McCain earns 42%. This survey was conducted Tuesday night, the night that Obama clinched the Democratic nomination.
That’s a big improvement for the Democrat who trailed McCain by six percentage points a month ago and fifteen points in March. The March survey was conducted shortly after Obama’s former Pastor, Jeremiah Wright, became a controversial part of the national dialogue. In February, before either Obama or McCain had wrapped up their nominations, McCain’s advantage over Obama was just two percentage points.
The new poll shows the number of voters who say they will cross party lines has already started to decline. Just 13% of Missouri Democrats currently say they will vote for McCain, down from 21% a month ago. Obama attracts only 8% of GOP voters, down from 14%.
This month, Obama leads by seven-percentage points among voters not affiliated with either major party. Last month, McCain had a modest advantage among unaffiliated voters. Twenty-six percent (26%) of unaffiliated voters are not supporting either major party candidate at this time.
Individual polls can sometimes overstate volatility in a race, especially when the results carry a four-and-a-half percentage point margin of sampling error. One way of addressing this is to look at a rolling-average of three consecutive polls. Using this approach, McCain leads Obama 47% to 41%. Last month’s three-poll average showed McCain up by seven.
McCain is currently viewed favorably by 55% of Missouri voters, Obama by 48%. Those figures have changed little over the past month.
June 5th, 2008 at 5:16 pm
McCain must hold Missouri
June 5th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
Any word if/when Ras is going to start doing Veep polling?
June 5th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
McCain will win MO if he picks a pro-life VP.
If he doesn’t the Republicans in the outstate will stay home and let Barack have the state. As a volunteer in MO in 2006, I can attest to the fickleness of social conservative voters in the Ozarks.
June 5th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Note that Obama’s numbers are flat. All the variance is in McCain’s numbers. Same thing we saw in OH, PA, KY, etc.
June 5th, 2008 at 7:03 pm
And again we have high undecideds in a southern border state. Once again I’m almost certain that the black vote is not composing must of the undecideds. So the undecided vote is pretty likely to break in McCain’s direction here.
June 5th, 2008 at 7:54 pm
As a Missourian, my sense is that McCain will win this state, but if he doesn’t, he will be hard-pressed to win, period. This is a state that the Dems used to own, but has trended Republican for quite awhile now, with the exception of 2006, of course.
June 6th, 2008 at 1:09 am
He needs to pick Sarah Palin within the next week, lock up the pissed of female voters. You’ll see bounces all over when he does.
I think it’ll be her.