Obama lead builds in new Michigan poll
detnews.com
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Gordon Trowbridge / Detroit News Washington Bureau
Barack Obama continues to hold a commanding lead over John McCain among Michigan voters, according to a poll Thursday by Rasmussen Reports.
Obama leads McCain 56 to 40 percent in the survey, more than doubling the 7-point edge Obama held in the last Rasmussen survey in Michigan, taken in late September.
The new survey of 500 likely Michigan voters was taken Wednesday -- a week after the McCain campaign announced that it was pulling out of Michigan because it felt it had a better chance in other states. The poll has an error margin of 4.5 percentage points.
Michigan Republicans have expressed some hope that public polls in September, showing Obama with a double-digit lead here, might have overstated his support or that the race might tighten. But the Rasmussen survey shows the largest Obama lead yet in a publicly released poll.
Rasmussen shows numbers for McCain falling across the board. For the first time in Rasmussen's Michigan polling, voters with an unfavorable opinion of McCain exceeded those who view him favorably, 51 to 47 percent. Sixty-one percent said they viewed Obama favorably.
By 19 points, voters said they trusted Obama more to deal with the economy. And by a 50 to 45 percent margin, they said they trusted Obama more on national security issues, a deficit for McCain on what might be his strongest issue. By a 2-1 margin, Obama was seen as the candidate better able to boost the domestic auto industry. |
