WaPo poll sample: 52% Democrats
posted at 9:05 am on July 16, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
The good news from the Washington Post poll for Barack Obama is that eight-point lead among registered voters. The bad news comes from the sampling, which as usual skews to the Democrats. When asked to identify their party affiliation, the sample showed 37% Democrats to only 24% Republicans. When calculated for "net leaned", the Democrats get 52% of the sample, compared to 38% for Republicans.
That doesn't explain the big gap on the economy, though, which McCain needs to close:
* Overall, the Democrat has a lead of 50 percent to 42 percent over Republican Sen. John McCain among registered voters nationwide, lifted by a big edge among women, and he has also regained an edge among political independents. But it is Obama's 19-point lead on the economy that has become a particularly steep challenge for McCain.
Economic concerns continue to eclipse other issues, with half the country saying the economy will be "extremely important" to their vote. Gasoline and energy prices, which voters rarely mentioned at the start of the year, come in just behind. The Iraq war, which was again the subject of direct engagement between Obama and McCain yesterday, ranks third. A cluster of domestic issues, including education, health care and Social Security, ranked behind the war, as did the issue of terrorism. *
McCain gets the nod in experience in leadership, but this remains a critical problem. In a weakening economy, people will tend to focus on pocketbook matters first, and Obama and the Democrats thus far have the edge. McCain has a big opening here, though; the main driver of economic concern at the moment is fuel prices. McCain has to hammer Obama on his obstructionism on increasing domestic supplies of energy through drilling, and emphasizing that more drilling means more jobs and less American money going out of the country.
Even if the eight-point lead was believable, it doesn't mean much in July. Obama should be blowing McCain out of the water at this point, and yet he's struggling to maintain any significant lead even among the friendliest sampling. All McCain needs to do now is stay close — and he could do better than that by hammering Obama on energy. If McCain wants to attack Obama's strength, that's the chink in the armor he should target.
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