Sean Oxendine's blog

Looking over polling report, I see a lot of data that I have missed, which point to the continued rehabilitation of the Republican brand, as the party becomes John McCain's party, rather than George Bush's party.  Consider:

NBC News: "Now I'm going to read you the names of several public figures and organizations, and I'd like you to rate your feelings toward each one as either very positive, somewhat positive, neutral, somewhat negative, or very negative. If you don't know the name, please just say so. The Republican Party."

The Republican party is still a net-negative, which is bad.  But it is the best showing in over two years of asking this question:

There is accumulating evidence that McCain's convention bounce may, in fact, be more of a bump, akin to the sustained bump that Bush got after his 2004 convention, or that Gore got after his 2000 convention.

Today we see Rasmussen showing McCain again on top in the tracking poll, giving some indication that the numbers have started to revolve around a new midpoint.  Moreover, the Diageo/Hotline tracking poll now shows McCain with a two-point lead.

The cross-tabs for the Hotline poll are even more amazing.  Looking at the issues comparison, we see the following:

Healthcare:  Obama +9 (45/36)

Economy: McCain +1 (43/44)

National Security: McCain +25 (33/58)

Energy:  Obama +1 (44/43)

Consider that in June, the numbers looked like this:

Economy:  Obama +6 (43/37)

War in Iraq: McCain +8 (41/49)

Healthcare:  Obama +13 (44/31)

On the eve of the Democratic convention, the numbers looked like this:

Economy:  Obama +8 (48/40)

War in Iraq:  McCain +9 (40/49)

Energy:  Obama +12 (49/37)

Healthcare: Obama +11 (47/36)

In other words, it is looking like there has been a fundamental shift in the way the people view the issue agenda, not just the way that they view the candidates.  McCain has improved relative to Obama in just about every way, pre-to-post convention.

Looking at polling report, we see ABC News showing similar gains for McCain.  From June polling he has gone from -16 to -5 on the economy, from +1 to +10 on Iraq, from +14 to +20 on terrorism, from +6 to +12 on international affairs, from -15 to -2 on energy policy, and from -8 to -1 on taxes. 

The typical fight in this country over the past 20 years or so has been a Republican party with a disadvantage on bread-and-butter issues (Example:  Look at the Sept. 27-30 ABC News poll from 2007 showing generic Democrat with a 30-point lead over generic Republican on health care), an advantage on national security, and an advantage on leadership (with the exception of the Clinton years).  If McCain has minimized the Dems' advantage on bread-and-butter issues, he is in better shape than I had imagined.

Of course remember, Gore's bump in 2000 and Bush's bounce in 2004 only lasted until the first debate . . .

Right after McCain's bounce -- which is now starting to look like a no-kidding bump -- started to become apparent, I made the following observation:

The really interesting results are going to come in polls for Senate and House races.  The main thing about the Republican convention and the Palin pick (and the unfair, unfounded attacks on her) is that the Republican party, for the first time in three years, is energized.  The importance of that can't be underestimated.  For Republicans running in Republican-leaning states or districts -- and that is a large majority of vulnerable Senate and House seats this term -- regular Republican turnout dedicated to electing a Republican ticket (as opposed to just stopping a Democratic President) could make a real difference.

You know, when I first heard the "lipstick" comment, I kind of rolled my eyes.  No way that it was meant as a reference to Palin, especially given the larger context of the speech.  Then I read how it was paired with a reference to an "old fish" trying to wrap itself in change.  And it became quite a bit more difficult to imagine that the analogy he was drawing wasn't intentional.

The left, of course, is apoplectic.  Every reference to every person who ever knew McCain or Palin who used the term is being trotted out, even at good lefty blogs like OpenLeft.  Andrew Sullivan's histrionics, temporarily abated for a couple days for some unknown reason that can only be explained in German, is now once again outraged:

We are being asked to believe that he called Sarah Palin a pig. If the people making that accusation have half a brain they know it's not true. This is not a question of interpretation. It is a fact. So we now find out again that John McCain is prepared to tell an absolute lie - in public, verifiable, uncontestable.

He does not have the minimal public integrity to be president of the United States.

Just remember, these are the same people who were absolutely certain that putting Obama in the same ad as Paris and Britney sent a subliminal message to us white folk that Obama had a penchant for white women (in fairness, Sullivan considered it an open question).  Which seems like more of a stretch to you?

Yesterday I hypothesized that McCain might get his bounce mostly in industrial, blue collar states, and in red states where he had been underperforming.  This seemed to find support in the Rasmussen and SUSA swing state polls from yesterday which showed no movement or even negative movement in FL, VA, and CO, but some movement toward McCain in OH and PA.

Today we see a little more evidence of this, as McCain has gone from +4 in NC in August to +20 in NC in September.  We unfortunately don't have any internals to see where the movement occurred, but if my suspicion is correct, a lot of the red states that have been marginal will probably be moving to McCain over the next few days.  Of course, I'd rather see a solidification of VA and CO, but that might not happen, ever, this cycle.

Also, Obama's decision to move organizers from GA to NC isn't looking like such a great idea, huh?  I've long been a critic of the 50-state strategy, and this is a prime reason why.  More on that (moron that?) later.

UPDATE:  And sure enough, Matt C at the always-excellent Race42008 notes that McCain has gone from +1 to +11 in Montana, according to Rasmussen.

National polling is not where the race is won and lost, as we learned eight years ago.  The state polling is what matters, and we're starting to see a trickle of poll data where we can measure the bounce there.

SurveyUSA is out with its first post-convention polling in Virginia, and it shows little-to-no movement toward McCain.  This is out of line with other national polling, which as I've noted, shows a big move.  The Rasmussen reports poll shows a slight bounce toward McCain, but not as big as his nationwide bounce. 

The internals of the SurveyUSA poll are particularly interesting -- there is movement toward Obama in the DC suburbs, while there is movement toward McCain in the Hampton Roads area.  This is completely consistent with their candidacies and with the national polling -- Obama moves up with upper middle class, wealthy, white suburbanites, while McCain moves up with a more traditionally middle class contingent (this area of the state also has a huge African American population in the cities and also rural counties, hence Obama's relatively strong performance here).

Truth be told, McCain's bounce is looking larger than I anticipated.  But in all of the post-convention polling so far, McCain/Palin is tied or ahead.  Gallup shows a 6-point bounce, Hotline/FD shows a 9-point bounce, Rasmussen shows a 7-point bounce, and CNN shows a 1-point bounce. 

I wouldn't get too terribly excited about the USA Today/Gallup poll showing McCain up 10.  Right now that is looking like a clear outlier.  Regardless, it is nice to see McCain up for a change.  My guess is that over the next couple of days we'll see this settle down somewhat.  But I don't think we'll settle back to a 2-3 point Obama win.  Polls will probably show things bouncing around a tie.  The Republican base is finally truly energized, the first time this has happened in a long, long time.

And we're starting to see a similar effect in other polling.  Democratic polling firm PPP shows Obama up only one in Michigan, as opposed to being up three and nine in the last couple of iterations of the poll.

We also see evidence for something I speculated about yesterday -- that there might be a downticket effect for Republicans as the base becomes energized.  Ted Stevens is just down three points in Alaska, a fourteen-point bounce for Senator Pork Barrel.

And in House races, we're starting to see a similar trend.  In polling taking in MO-09, a southern-accented open seat of the sort that Democrats have been picking up left and right lately, the GOP candidate has a twelve-point lead.  And in something of a "reverse bounce," a poll taken during the Democratic convention shows Republican Jay Love leading Bobby Bright 56-39% in AL-02.  I don't think Bright was really looking forward to having the spotlight on Obama.

It ain't over yet folks.  Not by a long shot.

I've kept a pretty low profile the last couple of weeks, because the state polls have been pretty scarce, and it is hard to say anything about polling during the convention season.  But we can deduce a couple of interesting things:

(1) Based on the tracking polls, both McCain and Obama got negative bounces from their veep picks.  This is interesting, but perhaps not surprising.  Both Obama and McCain have strong personal brands.  It is hard for two relatively obscure politicians (at the time of their selections) to add much immediately to the ticket.  This is unlike someone like Kerry who got a large Veep bounce, by adding someone who arguably had a stronger brand at the time he was picked.

(2) Obama's convention bounce was significant, but not overwhelming.  Doing an apples-to-apples comparison of polls (eg pre-convention vs. post-convention) we get the following:

CNN: +1

Hotline/FD +6

USAT/Gallup +4

CBS News +2

Gallup +9

Rasmussen +3

Which works out to about a 4 point bounce or so.  This is roughly the bounce the RCP average shows.

"On the site of what had once been Project X, nothing remained alive among the ruins--except, for some endless minutes longer, a huddle of torn flesh and screaming pain that had once been a great mind."

It seems every time I read Andrew Sullivan -- which is far too often I'm afraid -- I'm reminded of these lines from Atlas Shrugged regarding the death of one of the main villains: the brilliant Dr. Robert Stadler.   The tragedy of Dr. Stadler is that he knew better.  Unlike many of the other villains in the novel who seem to be intrinsically evil, Dr. Stadler was once a "good guy" but, blinded by the opportunity for fame and social approval, loses his bearings.

I have long been skeptical of the conventional wisdom that Biden was a safe, good pick for Obama.  And as I noted, the net result of this at the beginning was a negative bounce for Obama.

This negative bounce continued.  Indeed, yesterday -- the first poll sample to include completely post-Biden results -- was also the first Gallup poll to show Obama trailing McCain since May.  He's bounced back somewhat today (though the decline in Rasmussen continues), but the post-Biden depression might mute his Convention bounce, perhaps significantly.

This is unusual.  As Gallup has noted, running mate selections almost always come with a bounce.  They make the candidate look more Presidential, and usually offer a fresh breath of news for the other side.  Even Dole got a bounce from naming Kemp!  In 2004, Kerry didn't just get a bounce from becoming Kedwards, he got a sustained bump, and went from trailing in late June to leading for most of July and August.

We have noted before that Obama is something of the WYSIWYG candidate.  He hits a plateau in the polls, and has trouble getting past it.  The man has slain the Hillary dragon, named a Veep, travelled to Europe, and spent about $300M in the process.  And he's locked at 45-46% in the polls.

I am not going to predict a McCain victory; the atmosphere is just too toxic for Republicans to predict that.  But it is becoming increasingly fair to ask:  What else can Obama do to seal the deal?  (HINT: Giving a speech from a faux-acropolis isn't it).  He fared poorly down the stretch in the primaries.  This time, he doesn't start out with an almost-insurmountable lead . . .

But the people he has to persuade are disproportionately old, white, under-educated, and independent.  In other words, they aren't  exactly his wheelhouse.