Polls: Dems tied; McCain leads both in 'general election' matchups

[sinkingfeeling]

Source: USAToday.com

Rasmussen Reports says its daily tracking poll on the potential November matchups shows Republican Sen. John McCain leading Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton 50%-43% and leading her fellow Democrat Sen. Barack Obama 51%-41%. The numbers each have a margin of error of +/- 3 percentage points.

Update at 2:05 p.m. ET: Also today, Gallup said its polling signals that a "sizable proportion" of Democrats might vote for McCain if their preferred contender (Clinton or Obama) is not the party's nominee.



Read more: http://blogs.usatoday.com/onpolitics/2008/03/polls-dems-tied.html

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How nutty is the average American voter? I've lost all hope that Americans are waking up. Anybody that would vote for whacky McCain should have their head examined and any 'Democrat' who would vote Republican against their non-preferred candidate should be locked up.

[bluestateguy]

1. Rasmussen polls are bullshit

And I wish people would stop posting them here as if they are gospel truth

[caledesi]

9. Rasmussen? ALWAYS RW. NT

[Zynx]

10. More accurate than Zogby.

[Thepricebreaker]

22. UmmM Ras got the last 3 elections by less then 1/2 of 1% ... accurate is what it is...

[Red Zelda]

2. All hail McInsane

The mighty-soldierman-warboss-emperor hero-king!

Fuck him.

[TNOE]

3. Yep -

TOTAL BULLSHIT. Its going to be downright embarrassing for McCain.

[CBHagman]

4. We don't know all the factors that will be in place by November.

I understand we're going to be polled within an inch of our lives every second of every month through the beginning of November, but let's not get carried away. We don't know how the economy and world events are going to play out in terms of their effect on the national mood, and then there's the issue of demographics and the American voter. I just can't see McCain catching fire with a sizable enough portion of the electorate. We also don't know how bored and/or irate the country is going to be by November.

Strap yourselves in tightly and hang on.

[C_U_L8R]

5. Our vote is still split

these matchup polls are meaningless until we have a nominee

[Jester Messiah]

6. It can't last.

Once we have a nominee, we can focus our energies on sending McCain packing. I doubt he'll be able to maintain his lead... he's basically the second coming of Bob Dole.

[kenfrequed]

7. OK

We REALLY need to put this out in the press and hit it as hard and as steady as possible!!

It might be the only way to shut down any desire by the Republi-con's to attempt to affect states with open primaries.

[DFW]

8. "The Polls" also said that Hillary had the nomination locked up by a 20% margin

'nuff said?

[politmuse1]

11. Nomination polls are always inaccurate. But Democrats need to lead at this point, or we're sunk

In most presidential elections Democrats start with a big lead before the conventions and then it all tightens at the end. If Obama is 10 points down now, where do you suppose he'll be after the GOP convention in September? Which do-or-die states will he win to beat McCain? Ohio? Florida? He's not even competitive there.

The Democrats have gotten so much media attention this primary season that there's not much place for either of them to go up. McCain's been virtually ignored, and he's the one who can come back even stronger.

Our party is committing suicide in the one election served to us on a silver platter.

[DFW]

13. On your last point, I worry about that as well, but not to the point of panic

Here's why: as long as focus remains on Hillary and Obama, their points will
be mentioned at least as often as their fighting. E.g.: they had different plans to
help out people in dire straits due to the housing price collapse, but both spoke
out to help people. McCain came out and basically spouted Darwinian theory about
the survival of the financial fittest (funny how he won't cite Darwin to the
religious loonies), i.e. if you're in bad shape, then go bankrupt. It's the latest
version of the Republican theory of wealth: if you're rich, you deserve it, if you're
poor you deserve it.

McCain at the end of the day will have to go up against one or the other of them
(or, in the case of a total gridlock, Al Gore), and his intellect is no match for
any of them, which means he'll have to fall back on his tired and tried formulae.

If Obama is the nominee, and that is as good a probability as any, he'll blow McCain
away in speeches, debates, and 30 second sound bytes. The public will get bored if
he has to start his one-on-one already.

I'm apprehensive that the media will go back to trashing the Democratic nominee if
they have nothing else to occupy their small minds. It's an ingrained habit. Give
them some news, even if it's more Hillary said this, Obama said this, and if only
a quarter of it seeps through to people like Katrina victims, housing crash victims,
people who know someone who lost someone in Iraq, people who eat cat food so they can
afford medicine, and even the affluent people who don't mind taxes if they go for
roads, schools, medical care, and help for the poor so they might just not decide to
rob someone at gunpoint that night, then it's worth it. Yeah, there are plenty of
people who live in gated communities, I've seen them. But I also know people who are
well off who consider gated communities akin to penal colonies, and want no part of them.

As long as the media attention is willing to focus on Democrats and not always in a
negative light, this attention can't be all bad. McCain is a boring character except
when he blows his stack, and even then he doesn't really look like a leader. Actually,
as far as I'm concerned, what he really looks like is this:

If the media won't remind people of it, we can.

[Joe Chi Minh]

12. The noise machine's clearly working and evidently in great order.

[darue]

16. it's in better shape than ever, and those who don't 'get it' by now never will

Things will likely change once the nomination is over but this is just really hard to believe that they're both so far behind, it's crazy and shouldn't even be POSSIBLE. those pro-mccain percentages must include a lot of dems voting for him. several polls have reported this now, either it's totally crooked or we've already as good as lost.

worst case scenario I fear will play out - bush declares victory and starts pulling out of Iraq, around
September at latest. the bush agenda will be seen by too many as proven correct and mccain and a rethug majority will be a shoe-in. if that happens, then I think this democratic party will be basically dead for good. and that's exactly why they will try like hell to make it happen.

[Joe Chi Minh]

26. "...either it's totally crooked or we've already as good as lost."

Why should they be mutually exclusive? They go together, don't they? At least in theory. Though, personally, I don't think the total crookedness of the deployment of the noise-machine will be enough to subvert the reality of a virtual Republican wipe-out. The gulf is too big. It would need a mega-fraud of a magnitude to dwarf even those of the previous elections.

[dkofos]

14. Great, 7 more months of to close to call polls.

[Triana]

15. EDWARDS was the ONLY one who could've beat McSame...

...US voters are generally pretty friggin stupid - so I fear we're screwed.

[Riddler]

18. That's the exact reason the mainstream media helped dumped his campaign.

They knew he would be the only one who could win over every other candidate the repukes were putting up,so they did what they had to do to get him out of the race.

[fshrink]

17. Can we bet money on this here?

[AmericanUnity]

19. New NBC/WSJ poll shows Obama beating McCain and Hillary losing. On tonight's NBC Nightly News

[Honeycombe8]

20. Poll shown on TV today Wednesday said Obama leads McCain, McCain leads Clinton.

They're all pretty close, though. This fight amongst the Dems is taking its toll.

But November is a long way off.

[santamargarita]

21. Stupid Bullshit - The Democrats are split...for now

K&R

[Thepricebreaker]

23. but but McCain is old and stupid... asshats STOP underestimating him!!

[AwareOne]

24. Of course he will win, I said the day Edwards dropped out

was the day we lost the general election. President McCain, get use to saying it.

[bean fidhleir]

25. When all three choices are ideologically similar, personalities loom large

So if Hillary/Obama is the One True Choice, then Obama/Hillary must be the Original Demon From Hell and McCain looks like a reasonable fallback choice. Since, after all, there's not much difference in their politics, only in their rhetoric.

[Lasher]

27. And how about this one?

Bitter Democratic Fight Takes Voter Toll

Some Democrats Worry Race Is Getting Too Rough; Clintons Aren't Among Them

The bitter fight in the Democratic presidential race is taking its toll and the news may be particularly bad for New York Sen. Hillary Clinton.

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Vote2008/story?id=4534607&page=1

I opted out of GD-P and this is a post by someone who has never put anybody on ignore. I can't even go to the DU home page without seeing something from the greatest page about Hillary's three heads and Obama's occult animal sacrifices. Don't you people know how important it is to make sure Mr. Bush Third Term, 100 Years in Iraq, John McSame doesn't get elected this November? Don't you know what's at stake?

I see lots of Hillary and Obama supporters but where are the Democrats? Sheesh, enough already! Flip a fucking coin!

[robcon]

28. Heal the party divisions.

The Gallup poll is huge (over 6,000 Democrats) and shows that the nastiness is taking its toll. In the very likely event Obama were to be the nominee, there would be a huge number of McCain Democrats, and a sizable number of McCain Democrats if Clinton were the nominee...

If McCain vs. Obama, 28% of Clinton Backers Go for McCain
If McCain vs. Clinton, 19% of Obama backers go for McCain
by Frank Newport

PRINCETON, NJ -- "A sizable proportion of Democrats would vote for John McCain next November if he is matched against the candidate they do not support for the Democratic nomination. This is particularly true for Hillary Clinton supporters, more than a quarter of whom currently say they would vote for McCain if Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee..."
http://www.gallup.com/poll/105691/McCain-vs-Obama-28-Clinton-Backers-McCain.aspx