The Year Of Campaign Chaos
Yet Freedom
McCain Replaces Palin With Startled Deer
Blaming Homeowners For This Crisis? Please
Memo To Republicans - Politics Is War
The Uplifting Debate
A Movement to Break the Silence of Churches in Political Campaigns
Can The MARs Save McCain?
Post - Wall Street
Michelle Obama's Fearful Vision
Only Ourselves To Blame
Interesting Times
Memo To McCain: Take The Gloves Off
Main Street Need To Support Bail Out
A Heartbeat Away
The Curtain On The Last Act
Trust Us? In A Pig's Eye, I Say
Hoover-Era Ghost Stories No Longer Apply
America's Nervous Breakdown -- And The World's
Harper's Index
Law For Poor Didn't Cause Meltdown
Gagging On Wall Street's Bailout
Does McCain Still Agree With Reagan That Government Is The Problem?
The Grip Of Bad Ideas
Who Needs To Pay Their Mortgage And Who Doesn't?
In Sunny Santa Monica, A New Appreciation Of Life
The War To Promote Terror
If Rescue Passes, Here's Who Gets Credit And Blame
Hail Mary Vs. Cool Barry
How McCain Can Still Win
Biden Can't Abide By The Truth
Adult Supervision Required
Pols, The Press And The Financial Crisis
Dear Congress: Put The Gun Down Now
No Country For Liberals
Palin Wins Big With A Reagan-Like Flair
Boon For Voter Fraud, Bust For Democracy
The Hidden Imam
And In Other News …
What Is A Loophole?
It Was Palin's Night To Avoid Losing
Compassion, Certainly, But Justice, Too
Gotcha Questions For Katie Couric (And Her Colleagues)
Palin Alone Disqualifies McCain
Taking Stock of Testosterone
Whodunit ?
The Worst Of Both Worlds
The Change That Has Already Happened
Return To Redistricting Sanity
Pundits Side With Wall Street Over Main Street
How To Talk To Someone Who Sounds Racist
Tough Speeches Instead Of Tough Choices
Palin Dominates VP Debate
Why the Bailout Is a Crock -- Opinion
Catholics And Abortion (Again)
Blind Defense of Koran Abrogates Reality
The Sky is Falling
What McCain Learned From The Rough Rider
McCain's Debate Challenge



Michael Barone
Polls Continue To Show An Unstable
Presidential Campaign
Michael Barone 8/4/2008
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Just when you think you've got the presidential race figured out, something comes along to upend your carefully wrought conclusions.

Mainstream media provided lavish coverage of Barack Obama's trip abroad the week of July 21-25 and predicted he would get a bounce in the polls. Some of his supporters believe he has put the election away. Other observers employ the hackneyed and meaningless phrase, "It's his to lose."

The poll numbers tell a different and more nuanced story. The two national tracking polls showed Obama getting a bounce while he was in Europe, especially after his speech before 200,000 or so Berliners in the Tiergarten. Gallup showed him rising from a 46 percent-42 percent lead on July 22 to a 49 percent-40 percent lead on July 26. The Rasmussen tracking poll showed him rising from a 47 percent-45 percent lead on July 23 (reflecting the previous days' polling) to 49 percent to 43 percent on July 26.

But over the next several days, Obama bounced back down. Gallup showed him leading by a statistically insignificant 45 percent to 44 percent as of July 31. That's the closest the race has been in Gallup all that month. Rasmussen
had him down to 48 percent to 46 percent on the same day. The world tour bounce has begun to look like a bubble.

Obama may have gotten some lasting benefits from the trip. He can now say that he has been in Afghanistan and that he has visited Iraq for the first time since January 2006. Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki's seeming acceptance of Obama's withdrawal timetable may have undermined John McCain's argument that an Obama presidency could lead to disaster there. And there are a substantial number of American voters who will be attracted by a candidate who seems to pass what John Kerry in 2004 called a "global test."

Still, the basic dynamics of the race haven't changed. Obama appears to have a small lead. But he doesn't come close to maximizing the Democratic vote. And there is some evidence that the balance of enthusiasm has shifted and that young people — who seemed to turn out and vote for Obama in unusually high numbers in the primaries and caucuses — are no long so enthusiastic about him.

The first bit of evidence comes from the July 10-13 ABC/Washington Post poll. It asked registered voters if they were "certain" to vote.

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Obama and the Media COLOR
By Nate Beeler - The Washington Examiner * Posted 07/24/2008
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